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Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities

Coordinated by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center

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Welcome to ARIC Public Use Data Navigation System.   This navigation system is to help users use data of interest by providing documentation for public use data for the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study for Visit 1, Visit 2, Visit3 and Annual Follow Up through contact year 10 of the Cohort Component and data through 1997 for the Surveillance Component. It includes manuals, data dictionaries.   Note, that data is not included for the web version of ARIC Public Use.

Under the "Download" section complete manuals are available. Forms are included in manuals and are also available separately. Data dictionaries for each file consist of variable contents, listing of 10 observations, mean values for numeric variables and counts for character variables are also available for downloading.

The derived variable dictionaries have definitions of the derived variables which are essential for most data analysis. There you will find demographic information (such as race, gender, age) and other important derived variables (such as MI classification, nutrient coding, derived stroke variables) for the Cohort Component (DERPS12,DERPS22, DERPS31) and Surveillance Component (SOCCPS97, SEVTPS97, COCCPS97,CEVTPS97, CDERPS97). These dictionaries are under the derived file sections in "Cohort Data Information" and "Surveillance Data Information." The modified variable dictionaries describe variables that have been modified to protect confidentiality of participants.


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Notes for Publications

ARIC study data for the cohort baseline and follow-up visit, and surveillance data are now available for investigators outside ARIC.  Publications from this data should state that the data source was the public use data. In general, collaboration with an ARIC investigator is strongly encouraged to take advantage of the long experience of an ARIC investigator with the ARIC study and the ARIC dataset. There are standard procedures to establish such cooperation, described in detail in ARIC Manual 1, Section 4.5 Publication Policy . In brief, an outside investigator may contact an ARIC investigator (see list of ARIC investigators , along with a list of current  ARIC publications by these investigators, on the ARIC website at www.cscc.unc.edu/aric/ ) to explore interest in participating in preparation of a manuscript using ARIC data.

If an ARIC collaborator is found the collaborator works with the lead outside investigator to submit a manuscript proposal to the ARIC Steering Committee for comment and approval and for consideration of overlap with other ARIC papers underway.

Should an investigator choose to unilaterally analyze and publish from the public data set without input from ARIC investigators, it is strongly encouraged that this be acknowledged in the publication. Limitations of the public use data set should be acknowledged, as well.


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Question center

If you would like to get additional information regarding the ARIC Study, please visit our Web site at www.cscc.unc.edu or contact Gina Andrews at uccgla@mail.cscc.unc.edu .

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Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center   Department of Biostatistics
School of Public Health    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
137 E. Franklin Street Suite #203    Chapel Hill, NC 27514-4145