Presented by Peter Baltrus, PhD
Friday, June 6, 2025; 9am–12pm (CT) via Zoom

About the Presenter:

Dr. Baltrus is a Professor in the Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) and a senior researcher with the National Center for Primary Care in Atlanta, Read more.

About the Presentation:

A Virtual Hands-on Workshop Using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) Data

• Virtual hands-on workshop designed for clinical or social/behavioral faculty or fellows seeking to research and publish in areas such as public health, health behaviors, epidemiology, or health outcomes research.
• The workshop will include a review of downloading, importing, and merging datasets, as well as new content on how to appropriately account for sampling design and weighting when using multiple waves (years) of NHANES data • No prior knowledge of statistics or statistical software is assumed.
• Participants will learn to use the SPSS windows menus to download and import the data files, merge datasets, transform re-code and compute new variables, select a cohort based on inclusion criteria, perform frequencies, crosstabs, and descriptive statistics on key variables, graph scatterplots and histograms, test bivariate hypotheses using chi-square or t-tests, and develop an analysis plan to control for covariates.
• Workshop will demonstrate one method in SPSS for adjusting for sample weights in the complex survey design of NHANES and other national survey datasets.
• Participants will learn to formulate a research question in terms of a statistically testable hypothesis, and discuss alternative datasets that might be appropriate for different research questions or areas of inquiry. Software requirements: SPSS v. 27, SPSS Complex Samples v. 27 (optimal)