Towards Multi-Lingual Pneumonia Research Data Collection Using the Community-Acquired Pneumonia International Cohort Study Database

Abstract

Sharing the results of clinical research continues to play a large role in scientific discovery [1], and more and more funders and publishers are encouraging investigators to adopt sustainable means to share the data used along with their results. For ad-hoc studies the structure of data is not crucial beyond the needs of accurate analysis. However, when data sharing and reproducibility of research are important, time and effort must be invested to structure a dataset to be efficiently combined with other datasets. Efficient means of integrating data from different sources are needed to leverage the full benefits of data sharing because new research questions can be examined using integrated, multi-source data. Studies that are international in scope can provide large, diverse samples of patient populations, but require investment in translation, and the appropriate ontological structuring of data. In this paper we describe the process of extending the Community Acquired Pneumonia Organization (CAPO) clinical research database to support data collection for multiple languages. After English, Spanish is the most common spoken language of members of the Community Acquired Pneumonia Organization with almost 40% of member sites being in Spanish speaking countries. Starting with Spanish we establish a general multi-language workflow for data entry into the CAPO database, with the eventual goal of supporting all CAPO member languages. Methods The study database for CAPO currently resides in a web-hosted instance of the REDCap electronic data capture software. REDCap is a secure web application for building and managing online surveys and databases. Members of CAPO access the REDCap instance remotely from its web URL https:// id.research.louisville.edu/capo using a web browser and their assigned user credentials. Demographic and clinical history information can then be entered for new cases in the database.

Adapting an Online Survey Platform to Permit Translanguaging

“…Online digital survey platforms such as REDCap (https:// projectREDCap.org/; Harris et al 2009) in theory have such potential. Indeed, access to surveys in multiple languages are now afforded through REDCap's "multilingual hook," with a single data output if desired permitting comparable surveys across different language populations (Mattingly et al 2019). Yet within multinational and cross-cultural studies, it remains common for a participant to be offered and to choose a single language with which to access and complete a survey.…”