After creating a new structure for the current year’s piloting data there has been a bit of disconnect in development between the two data sets. There’s just not enough time to ensure that everything works across both data sets. There were basically two choices to moving forward: 1) construct a view of the new data structure that mimics the old data structure; 2) port the old data structure to the new one and continue redevelopment of the scripts. I chose the latter, mainly because there are some improvements I’d like to make to the interface in the process.

I created a series of SQL statements to run in MySQL that will convert the data from the packet_item_records and miscon_packet_refs tables to the packet_students, packet_data, and miscon_packetdata_refs tables. After the conversion I updated any pages that referenced the old data structure. So far in testing the data seems to have converted perfectly.

Minus one issue. Multiple selections for the answer choice questions (A, B, C, D) from 2006 were recorded as a generic Multiple rather than Y+NS, N+NS, etc. This value is not represented in the updated data format or on the data entry forms or summary tables. Rather then spend too much time addressing this issue I’m going to leave these values empty for now. I don’t expect this to be a problem since the researchers are focused on data for the current pilot and field tests. Also, I’m keeping the old version of the piloting data and scripts that interact with it online in case it’s needed.