The Analyzer Tools
Every data collection system has a purpose, either to make some inferences, or to prove/disprove/test a hypothesis, or to measure something etc. Thus data collection has to be followed up with careful analysis of the data. Hence it is essential to offer an analysis tool for performing analysis on the collected data on the Electronic Data Capture Platform.
OpenXanalyzeR (oXa) is essentially a separate tool integrated into our forms-based data collection package, so data collected through mobile phones can be seamlessly analyzed and reports generated. oXa is also generic enough that it can be used as a general purpose analysis tool for practically any kind of data. Data can be imported from a variety of sources such as csv formats, spreadsheets, databases, text files, SPSS data files etc. for subsequent analysis.
oXa uses the powerful and open source statistical language called R for doing its backend work, and thus the results obtained are dependable and can be cited in research papers and will find acceptance everywhere, particularly because of the growing popularity of R in the field of statistics amongst academic and industrial researchers. R is essentially a command driven language, but oXa provides an easy-to-use SPSS-like user interface to make it easy for the beginners to get their job done without having to memorize all R commands. The power users whose needs cannot be fulfilled by the UI and those who need more control over their analysis, can directly type R-commands inside the UI as oXa exposes the full power of R through a console window. Such scripts can also be used for repetitive use.
oXa also has a documentation features built into it which is very useful for documentation of research. With this feature the R-commands can be stored for reference with their results in a separate Output window. This helps in reproducibility, an essential feature that is helpful in citing results in research papers and for others to verify and reproduce calculations done in any analysis done through oXa.
oXa has another very powerful feature that it can be deployed on a server, and remote users can access it through a web browser. The option of running oXa on a local machine is always available, in case the remote server option is not feasible.
Handsrel has also built a powerful and generic search interface feature into OpenXanalyzeR for building queries for data-set partitioning and for applying extensive exclusion and inclusion criteria to tailor the data-set to the specific needs of Study Manager. This feature is also used in filtering out identifying fields from the data-set where user anonymity is essential. This generic tool is helpful in creating many other applications such as a cohort builder for longitudinal cohort studies.
In summary, oXa is an analytics tool comprising a statistical computation engine and an open standards language which, along with its vast set of modules and packages, enables us to offer an advanced, low-cost analytics package that can be enhanced as per end-user needs. The increasingly popular acceptance of the R package in academic and industrial research environments world-wide also lowers the barrier to acceptance from our potential clients.