Love Data Week 2025 – February 17th – February 21st
Conversations around issues and methods in data creation, analysis, and visualization
Love Data Week is an international event intended to engage researchers in dialogues around issues and methods in data creation, analysis, and visualization. As federal and foundation funders increase their focus on rigor and reproducibility, conversations about data are more important than ever.
Nine sessions will be in-person in the Evelyn Fike Laupus Gallery, 4th Floor Laupus Library and live streamed on Panopto or Webex. Several virtual training sessions will be delivered virtually: Basic REDCap, Intermediate REDCap, and Qualtrics.
All sessions are open to ECU Faculty, Staff, and Students.
Schedule of Events
Monday, February 17th
Sampling in the Field…Literally: Successes and Challenges of Biospecimen Collection and Analysis in the Field
Liz Mizelle
10:00am – 11:30am
This presentation offers an overview of biospecimen collection, emphasizing the unique aspects of field collection. It highlights the critical role of field-based sampling and examines how researchers manage both the successes and challenges that arise in real-world settings. Featuring a case study on urine collection from a mobile, hard-to-reach population, the presentation will provide strategies to maintain sample integrity, analyze in the field, and adapt to logistical obstacles.
How to Prepare a Tidy Dataset
Jed Smith
1:00pm – 2:30pm
Tidy Data is a way of structuring data so that the resulting tidy datasets are easily understood and analyzed by people and machines. Since all tidy datasets are structured similarly, tabular data using this standard are relatively simple to understand, utilize, and update. This presentation will focus on the creation of “tidy” datasets in spreadsheets which will improve data analysis using a variety of tools, like Microsoft Excel and R programming language. The presentation will consist of several sections, each comprising a short informational talk and an example to illustrate the content. The primary takeaway for attendees will be several proper examples of tidy datasets, a few examples of messy datasets, and how to tidy them to improve them during data preparation.
In a core paper establishing the theoretical approach to the development of “Tidy”, a package used within R programming language, Hadley Wickham of RStudio laid out the rationale for the utilization of a set of processes related to data preparation. To help us develop “tidy data”, this presentation will focus on:
- Core vocabulary: tabular data (data tables), variables (fixed or measured), and observations
- Rules for tidy data – based on three core principles:
- Each variable forms a column
- Each observation forms a row
- Each type of observational unit forms a data table
- Data structure and semantics
- Common problems with messy datasets and how to tidy them
Tuesday, February 18th
Python Workshop
Hui Bian, Office for Faculty Excellence
10:00am – 12:00pm
This workshop is for people who don’t know much about Python. We will use Spyder in Anaconda to do programming. Spyder is an integrated development environment for Python (IDE). We will learn the interface of Spyder, how to read external data files into Spyder, data management (select cases and recode variables), how to get plots, and how to analyze data including Chi-square test, correlation analysis, t test, ANOVA, and linear regression analysis. Please go to the workshop webpage to download Anaconda and workshop materials.
Why diversity matters in the study of complex disease genetics
Jessica Cooke Bailey
2:00pm – 3:30pm
In this presentation, Dr. Cooke Bailey will provide an overview of the importance of genetic, clinical, and lifestyle data from people with different backgrounds for the study of complex disease genetics.
Wednesday, February 19th
RedCap Basic Training
Chris Mottler
9:00am – 10:30am
Virtual Only
RedCap Intermediate Training
Gary Wallace
1:00pm – 2:30pm
Virtual Only
Qualtrics User Training
Gary Wallace
3:00pm – 4:00pm
Virtual Only
Thursday, February 20th
Plain Language Summaries: A Tool for Scientific Communication & Inclusivity
Kerri Flinchbaugh
10:00am – 11:30am
Plain Language Summaries (PLS) are incredibly effective science communication tools that allow researchers to reach a wider audience by summarizing their work in more inclusive and accessible ways. This presentation explores rhetorical aspects of these summaries along with specific strategies for thinking through the composition of an effective PLS. Participants will be asked to consider the meaning of ‘understandable language’ along with what it means to write for a public audience. Bring one of your own Abstracts and workshop it into a PLS!
Capturing Naturalistic Driving Data: Wonders and Worries!
Anne Dickerson
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Current digital technology can capture the everyday driving behaviors of older adults and potentially be used to predict preclinical phase of Alzheimer’s Disease. With the advancement of preventative therapies, early intervention is needed to prevent or delay this progressive disease. This session will describe how the use of datalogger in participants’ vehicles captures driving behavior data, how the data is collected, stored, organized and analyzed. Outcomes from a study of 74 older adults in Greenville, NC will be highlighted and future research potential.
Friday, February 21st
Missing Data: Why Deletion is not the Answer
Whitney Moore
10:00am – 11:00am
This 45-minute presentation will introduce the different types of missing data and the evolution of handling missing data, including why multiple imputation and full-information maximum likelihood (FIML) are the best practice recommendations for reducing bias, increasing generalizability, and maintaining power of your sample size. The session will then finish with a brief introduction to how planned missing data design methodology – which is not anticipating attrition –actively reduces participant burden and optimizes data collection.
Oral Microbiome quantum leap: Moving beyond commensalism/parasitism
Ramiro Mendonça Murata, DDS, MS, PhD
Associate Professor
ECU School of Dental Medicine / Department of Foundational Sciences
1:00pm – 2:00pm
This session will cover:
- Understand the effect of small molecules on virulence factors of C. albicans;
- Identify the flavonoids with anti-HIV activity
- Understand the Influence of oral microbial metabolites on HIV infection.
Processing and analysis of eye-tracking data in language-impaired populations
Matt Walenski, PhD
3:00pm – 4:00pm
Dr. Matt Walenski will discuss two techniques for data processing and analysis of eye-tracking data for comparisons between healthy language comprehension and language comprehension in individuals with primary progressive aphasia. The first technique is growth curve analysis (comparisons of change over time in regression slopes). The second is curve fitting, which identifies the parameter values for a type of curve that matches the shape of the gaze data as a stimulus is processed. Dr. Matt Walenski will cover real examples from two recently published journal articles that employ these techniques.