WELCOME

NUTR
TO 551:
ANALYSIS OF
NUTRITION
Dr. Iskandar DATA
michele.iskandar@mcgill.ca

McGill School of Human

Nutrition January 7, 2019
Overview of
Course
■ Learning from real studies (required
readings –
read before class!)
– Various study designs, animal and
human studies
■ Practice and building on concepts
What you will learn in
this course
How to:
■ Build and manipulate a database in JMP
■ Recognize variable types
■ Select a statistical test based on data properties
■ Interpret and report on data analysis results in
oral, written, and visual formats
(tables/graphs/figures)
■ Critically assess scientific articles
Assessme
nts
■ Midterm (30%)
■ In-class quizzes (10%)
■ Group Project: work in pairs – TBA next week
(20%)
– 12% poster presentation
– 8% peer feedback, self-reflection, poster
revision
■ Final Exam (40%)
Getting to know
you
■ What year of study, what
program?
■ Any experience with data
analysis?
https://seobrien.com/how-big-data-is-finding-its-
market-in-texas
 Dat
a
■ Data: facts and statistics collected together for
reference or analysis (Oxford Dictionaries definition).
– Anything recorded is data
Ex: patient felt dizzy, BP is high
■ Structured vs. unstructured data
– Examples?
- Structure: BP 120/80 or weight (has a domain of
numbers)
- Unstructured: symptoms (different lists for
different individuals – cannot calculate SD or
■ Nutrition: dietary intake, nutritional treatment/intervention
averages)
– Why is dietary intake data unique?
Databas
es
■ Organized data for analyses
■ Several types of software to assist in
creating and analyzing databases:
– Excel, Microsoft Access, SPSS, SAS, R,
STATA, SQL, and more!
Examples of nutrition
databases
Epidemiological Investigations – provide huge data
■ Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals
Follow-up Study
■ EPIC – European Prospective Investigation into
Cancer and Nutrition

National Investigations (Population Databases) -

done yearly
■ CCHS – Canadian Community Health Survey
■ CHMS – Canadian Health Measures Survey
■ NHANES – National Health and Nutrition
Examination Survey
CCH
S collects information related to health status,
■ Initiated in 2001: Cross-sectional survey that

health care utilization, and health determinants

for the Canadian population.
■ Objectives:
– Support health surveillance programs by
providing health data at the national,
provincial and intra- provincial levels
– Provide a single data source for health
research on small populations and rare
characteristics
– Timely release of information easily
accessible to a diverse community of
users
– Create a flexible survey instrument that
includes a rapid response option to address
emerging issues related to the health of the
population
■ Self-reported dietary intake assessments (2 x 24-
CHM
S as
■ Initiated in 2007: collects questionnaire data as well
direct physical measurements (blood pressure,
height, weight, physical fitness, bone density and
vision exams)
– First part of survey is a household interview,
detailed assessment of health-related
topics.
– Second part of the survey is a visit to a
mobile examination centre (MEC, mobile
clinic) to collect physical measures
■ Objectives:
– Create national baseline data on obesity,
hypertension, cardiovascular disease,
exposure to infectious diseases, and exposure
to environmental contaminants.
– CHMS Biobank: Stores blood, urine and DNA
samples to test for chronic and infectious
diseases, biomarkers, and for use in future
health research projects.
■ Self-reported dietary intake (Food Frequency
NHANE
S United States annual population investigation
■
■ Began in 1960s (annual starting in 1999)
■ Objectives:
– Assess health and nutritional status of
adults and children
– Determine prevalence of major diseases and
risk factors for diseases
– Form the basis for national standards for
measurements such as height, weight, and
blood pressure
■ Questionnaire data and direct physical
measurements
■ Self-reported dietary intake (2 x 24-hour dietary
recalls) & biomarkers
■ n = at least 5,000/year
https://
www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/about_nhanes.htm
Population surveys – things
to keep in mind
■ Representative sample (participants not
excluded based on disease status; provides a
better picture of the actual health of
Canadians)
■ Response is voluntary
■ Exclusions in Canadian surveys (still reached
97% of the population even with these
exclusions)
– Infants and children (CCHS excludes <12 years old,
CHMS excludes <3 years old)
– Living on reserve
JMP

■ Point and click software, but also with syntax

option
■ Syntax: coding language used to perform data
analysis operations in specific program
environment
■ Different statistical programs have different
syntax
Syntax and
Reproducibility
■ Syntax = Lab notes for data analyses
■ Keep copies of syntax to refer to over the
duration of the project (and after completion!)
■ Share syntax with peers, team members,
mentors
■ If using point-and-click feature of JMP -> syntax
can still be displayed and saved
Creating
Databases
Begin by deciding on:
■ Variable names
– Ease of recognition can vary widely (some variable
names are coded, others are short-form descriptors
for others to understand)
■ Data labels
– More complete description of variable name (you
can add labels to variables so they’re more
understandable)
■ Variable type/measure
– Numeric or String
– Continuous (scale),
categorical (nominal),
ordinal
JMP Data
View
JMP Variable
Info
 Database
Formats
Long Wide
dataset
SubjectID FoodRecordDay Kcal/day SubjectID
dataset
Kcal_Day1 Kcal_Day2 Kcal_Day3

101 1 2175.2 101 2175.2 2063.8 2323.4

101 2 2063.8 102 1989.3 2068.5 1954.7

101 3 2323.4 103 2205.1 2246.8 2239.3

102 1 1989.3
102 2 2068.5

102 3 1954.7
103 1 2205.1

103 2 2246.8
103 3 2239.3
Thought
Experiment
Repeated Measures Study Design
■ Animal study involves assignment to a treatment
or control group, and daily collection of body
weight
– 10 animals
– 5 days in duration
■ How can this data be organized?
Variabl
e
■ A factor or attribute that can assume two or
more values
■ Domain = all possible values that a variable
can have
Qualitative vs
Quantitative
■ Qualitative
– Properties that vary in a type of
attribute
– Ex: sex, religion, eye color, marital
status
■ Quantitative
– Properties that differ in amount
– Ex: height, weight, blood pressure
Discrete vs.
Continous
■ Discrete
– Quantitative adjacent variable in which no
intermediate values are possible
– Can we have 1.5 or 2.8 children?
– All qualitative variables are discrete
■ Continous
– Intermediate values are possible between two
adjacent scale values
– E.g.: Ht, Wt, BP
– In practice can be converted into discrete
variable
– The domain could be infinite between 2
adjacent units (1.1, 1.11, 1.111,…)
Data
Types
■ Numeric: data coded only in numbers

■ String: data coded in characters, can also contain

numbers (alphanumeric)
Scales of
Measurement
■ Nominal
– Qualitative differences in scale values
– Variable has two or more categories without a natural order
(categorical data)
– Examples? Food categories, hair colour, city of birth
– The score for each subject is placed in ONE category
– These categories are mutually exclusive
– Has no implied order (cannot be ranked in a specific order)
■ Ordinal
– Different scale values represent relative differences,
and the “order” matters (therefore, they can be ranked)
– Variable has two or more categories with an intrinsic
ranking/order (temporal position, superiority), but the difference
between each value is not necessarily known (the distance
between the differences is unknown)
– Examples? Rank ice cream flavours
– You do not know how much more you like the first ranked
flavour than the second one
Scales of
Measurement
Scale: Used for interval and ratio variables (both are
considered continuous data)
■ Interval:
– Scale values have equal and exact distance
(distance b/w a temp of 1 and 2, and b/s 2 and 3,
is equal and known)
– Zero point is arbitrary
– Continuous data ordered in a logical sequence
– Examples? Temperature, time of day
■ Ratio:
– Measurement scale uses the same interval between
one measurement and the next, with a true zero
point.
– Examples?
Ordinal Data
Examples
- How much do you agree with the following
sentence? I feel completely prepared for the
course exam.
a) Strongly agree
b) Somewhat agree
c) Neither agree nor disagree
d) Somewhat disagree
e) Strongly disagree

- Ranking of individuals who finished a marathon (1st

place, 2nd place, 3rd place, etc.)
Questio
ns
■ Can ordinal data be coded as Numeric or String?
■ From the example in the previous slide:
■ The first one is string but can be coded with
numbers
■ Can numeric data also encode nominal variables? Why?
■ Yes
Scientif
ic Resear
Research
ch
Process Problem
Proble
m

Interpretatio
n/ Hypothe
sis
Conclusion

Analys Methodolo
is gy
How to critically
evaluate a scientific
article (1) by the article (in
■ Issue(s) addressed
Introduction/Background section):
– What is the research question?
– Critical assessment: Does the research
question address a knowledge gap?

■ Purpose and/or Hypothesis (in

Intro/Background OR Methods
section):
– What is the purpose and/or hypothesis of
the study?
– Critical assessment: Is the hypothesis logical?
What has informed the hypothesis?
How to critically
evaluate a scientific
article
■ (2)
Study Design (in Methods section):
– Who are the participants? What is the sample
size? How
were variables measured?
– Critical assessment: How were the participants
recruited? Is the study design appropriate for the
research question? Is the sample size sufficient?
Were the study tools used validated?

■ Analysis (in Methods/Statistics section):

– What type of variables are present? What types
of analyses were run?
– Critical assessment: Were the analyses
appropriate for the
data? Possibility for errors, confounding?
How to critically
evaluate a scientific
article
■ (3)
Interpretation/Conclusion (Discussion and/or
Conclusion sections);
– What are the main results of the study?
Has the hypothesis been accepted or
rejected?
– Critical assessment: What are the strengths
and limitations of the study? Who do the
results pertain to? (How transferable are they
to other populations?)
■ Future Directions (Sometimes in Discussion,
sometimes up to reader!):
– Critical assessment: Does this work add to an
evidence- base? What might the implications
be? What new questions could arise?
Required reading for
next week
■ Evergreen and Emery 2018: Data Visualization
Checklist
– All required readings will be uploaded
on MyCourses