VACCINE PREPAREDNESS STUDY / Uninfected Protocol Cohort (VPS/UPC) Public Data Set

The study protocol, clinical report forms (CRF's) and extensive additional
documentation are in the accompanying Adobe Acrobat PDF file
(VPS_UPC.PDF).  If you don't already have the Acrobat reader, it is
available, free of charge, from the Adobe internet web site:

http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/readstep.html

The data are stored in SAS version 5 transport files which have been
compressed and stored in an accompanying MS Windows 95/NT self-extracting
file - XPORT.EXE.  Run XPORT.EXE to extract the SAS transport files (the
extracted files will occupy some 50MB of space).  The data files are
fully described in the VPS_UPC.PDF mentioned above.  If you are not a SAS
user and don't have access to the SAS System you can download a free
viewer (runs on Windows 95/98 or Windows NT 4) that will allow you to look
at and print out the data.  The SAS System Viewer 8 can be downloaded from
the SAS web site at:

http://www.sas.com/bin/broker?_program=sps.sassysview_800_sysdep.sas&_service=sps-prod

Please be sure to use the SAS System Viewer 8 rather than the 6.12
version.  The older version cannot read transport files.  Also note that
the viewer will not display the data according to its SAS formats - just
the raw numbers.

If you do not have access to SAS but intend to work with these data files
there are many tools available to convert the accompanying SAS transport
files into other formats for other statistical packages, such as SPSS or
database managers such as Oracle or Microsoft Access. A simple web search
should lead you to some of these software tools. Data that depend on SAS
formats may or may not be converted correctly depending on your tools and
the target statistical package or database environment.

If you will be using SAS to work with the data files a sample SAS program
to convert the transport files to regular SAS files is included in the
accompanying file, IMPORT.SAS. Don't forget to change your options setting
to include the new library in your format search (see FMTSEARCH in your
SAS documentation) when you begin working with these data.


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Geoffrey Snyder
SCHARP  (Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Research and Prevention)
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Seattle Washington

Internet: gsnyder@scharp.org
Phone:    (206) 667-7820
Fax:      (206) 667-4812
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