Getting started with NHANES study, non-programming

[PFM151632]

I am conducting a research project about the Benefit of a Healthy Plant-Based Diet on Cognitive Function with aging using 2 2-year NHANES survey cycles. In order to categorize my population according to its diet preference I need to merge the 2 2-year NHANES dietary data and other interview data, then score the intakes for those participants who have data. Once, I have my different diet groups I will need to assess the weight of a number (11) of specific potentially modifiable risk factors (through a risk scoring profile) in the occurrence of cognitive dysfunction.

I am clear on my objectives. My issue is that I am not used to SAS and I am not a programmer. The tutorials that I have seen speak about programming and I am not at this stage at all. They do not help me. I have data that I can transfer to SAS but then I am blocked. Is there a possibility to get mentoring session from you or support community?

What would you recommend to me? 

[ChrisHemedinger]

You didn't mention what SAS tools you have available.  If you have SAS Enterprise Guide or SAS Studio, each of these provide hundreds of tasks that allow you to manipulate/merge data and get started with statistical tasks.  They provide point-and-click methods that -- as a result -- generate SAS code for you.  It doesn't sound like you need Statistics training, but the free "Stat1" course from SAS offers exercises/solutions that use both tasks and code, depending on your preference.

These may help you to get started. Eventually you will probably need to adjust some of the code for your study.

If you have access to JMP (another interface from SAS), you may find that useful as way to interact with your data in more ways before encountering code (or maybe avoiding code entirely). 

[PFM151632]

Thank you so much, @ChrisHemedinger ! I will try this option. It is good to know about the point-and-click methods.

[PFM151632]

@ChrisHemedinger Thank you for your advice. I have SAS studio. I had a look to the tutorial but what I do not know is whether I need to merge the all NHANES data sets (diet interviews, demographics, past medical history/risk factors, cognitive functions tests etc...) prior to do my analyses, which seems for me more logical if I want to assess the impact of diet on cognitive functions and take into account confounders. if I need to merge them, it should be one after one or can I merge all simultaneously? thanks for any advice.