NAHDAP: Building on the Rich Metadata from Decades of Substance Abuse Studies: The Potential for Common Data Elements (CDEs) to Enhance the Identification of Health Data across Different Research Projects

Abstract

Continued analyses of key datasets are extremely important to building understanding of the underlying causes of substance use and addiction, and multiply the benefits of our nation’s investment in this science. ICPSR and the National Addiction and HIV Data Archive Program (NAHDAP) disseminate data from hundreds of NIH-funded research studies, as well as data collected with support from other agencies and foundations, many with questions about health outcomes or status that are not easily discovered with current search protocols which can be either too narrow or too broad. With funding from NIDA, we are working to increase the use of these extant data for health research by making these variables easier to identify. This is of great benefit the research community, providing improved discoverability of relevant health concepts within and, more importantly, across the multiple studies maintained in our repositories.