Data

Data I Worked With

I have extensive experience working with various large data types, including large surveys, cancer registries, clinical trials, and electronic health record data. This is a list of data which I found super interesting：

• Health and Retirement Study (HRS)
  • Longitudinal data that tracks individuals over time, making it ideal for analyzing changes in health outcomes.
  • Rich health and financial data, which helps explore the relationship between aging, health, and wealth.
  • My experience： it has unique questions regarding risk preferences over the years. The information regarding cancer diagnosis and details might not be as good as others.
• Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)
  • One of the longest-running household panel surveys, making it invaluable for studying long-term economic trends.
  • Intergenerational data, useful for studying family-level dynamics and economic mobility over generations.
  • My experience： it provides detailed information about risk behaviors such as smoking and drinking and unique information about gender perspectives. But you might want to be careful about the number of observations left for estimation.
• Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS)
  • Detailed data on healthcare usage, costs, and insurance coverage, perfect for health economics research.
  • Includes longitudinal data on households, which is useful for studying changes in healthcare access and expenses over time.
  • My experience： it is useful for policy analysis due to its comprehensive insurance and medical expense data （with public access）. But information on detailed payments by types of procedures needs to be complemented by others.
• National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)
  • Nationally representative data on health status, healthcare access, and health behaviors.
  • My experience：it provides information regarding various types of individuals' healthy behaviors, which is great for understanding the usage of preventive health services. But it is a cross-sectional data.
• Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Data
  • Cancer incidence and survival data, unique for studying cancer trends and outcomes.
  • Includes population-based data from cancer registries, enabling geographic comparisons of cancer statistics.
  • My experience： it contains detailed data on cancer diagnosis, treatment, and survival rates, useful for both clinical and policy research. It links to SEER-Medicare but you need to pay for it and it takes time to apply for it.
• National Lung Screening Trials (NLST)
  • Clinical trial data on lung cancer screening, providing high-quality evidence on screening outcomes （rare to find！）.
  • Excellent for studying the effectiveness of early cancer detection methods and their impacts on survival rates.
  • My experience： it includes detailed demographic and clinical information, spanning over 7 years, enabling analysis of preventive screening behaviors. But participants' behaviors including smoking and drinking are not tracked over the study years. It requires data application.