I've made several posts about how I think we could leverage the benefit of our anecdotal experiences by quantifying and aggregating our results.

What might we find if we systematically studied all those things - be it music, exercise, aloe vera, etc.- that people post on? What might we find if, once we have the data, we set our computers data mining?

Why us? We live Parkinson's 24/7. We ask the questions. We generate the data. We have the skills to analyse the data. We have an interest in getting answers quickly.

Back in July I posted a survey on handedness. It did not get off the ground.

Since then, I've simplified the survey and written a web page that makes it far quicker to enter the data. You can now complete the survey in less than 1 minute.

The data you provide is anonymous. It is open to the public.

To take part, go to:
http://www.parkinsonsmeasurement.web...ess/survey.htm

To see the raw data go to:
http://www.parkinsonsmeasurement.web...ss/results.xml

If this takes off, I'll present the results in a user friendly way. But, in the meantime, if you right click on the raw data you can export it to Excel.

The main motivation for this particular study is to get the process started. But, if enough people take part, we will see if there is a relationship between the side of dominance and Parkinson's and, by comparing our results with those already published, get some indication of how representative we are as a group.

I'll be grateful for comments. I'll be even more grateful for people to take the survey and for people to post analyses of the data.

John

John, I did the survey, pressed the button, but there is nothing that lets you know it has been sent, could this be improved on?

Lindy,

Thanks for your comment. If things go according to plan, when data is entered and the Submit button is pressed you should see the following pop up boxes:
- These are your results ...
- Are you happy to save the results? ...
- Submit was successful ...
Alternatively, if the data is invalid, you should get messages explaining the problem.

I'd be grateful if you'd:
- press the results link on my previous post and see if your data is there
- if not, reenter the data (I'm sorry for this)
- if it's still not worked, please PM me with the name of your operating system and browser.

John

Hi John, still no result for Safari/Mac, there are a few of us using similar setups.

My apologies to anyone having problems submitting data. If things go OK, you are given a post ID. If you press Submit and nothing happens, then something has gone wrong. You can check your data has been sent by going to the results page, link given in the original post.

To work the survey needs JavaScript to be enabled.

IE makes it clear whether JavaScript is enabled, but Safari users are having problems. To check that JavaScript is enabled in Safari:
Safari>Preferences
Click Security
Check Enable JavaScript

Please PM me if you still have problems.

John

Thanks John,

Seems to be working fine now for input from Safari on a Mac.

I've added a page that gives a statistical summary of the results. This is updated whenever a new person does the survey.
http://www.parkinsonsmeasurement.web...ss/summary.htm

If you have any problems, please PM me.

11 people, all IPD, have completed the survey so far: too few to say anything definitively. Nevertheless, it's interesting to note the average age at diagnosis is 46. There's clearly a bias: people in this forum who complete online surveys are probably not typical of the wider Parkinson's population. Even so, I was not expecting such a young age.

Now for a rant. I estimate that we have about 100 people view the forum each day, so we should be able to do better than 11 taking the survey. If you haven't done so, please complete the survey now.

John

Thanks John,
I have added my information to the survey. Every little bit helps.

It was smooth and took me less than a minute.
Great job John and this opens the road to greater things by engaging patients in serious research that is designed and executed by them for the first time ever.
I greatly appreciate your programming skills and I know how much hard work is done behind the simple human-machine interface (I know this because I spent few years of my long career in designing and building database applications).
My preliminary comments are the following:
- For the present application, it would be nice and more user friendly if the results of voting are displayed immediately after pushing the submit button. It would be also nice to display the results in charts and pie form.
- It would be expedient to outline from the beginning the overall objective and strategy to be used in order achieve these objectives then defining the structure and the main modules to be built.
Imad

We've now had 23 people complete the survey. To whom goes my thanks.

It's still too soon to be definitive, but we are a young lot, average age at diagnosis is now almost 49.

It is interesting that we've had no right handed men whose symptoms first showed on the left side. If we had come across this a priori, it would be statistically significant. As it is, we've found it a posteriori - if you data mine deeply enough you'll find something, possibly really significant, possibly not. Still it's worth following.

To do the survey: http://www.parkinsonsmeasurement.web...ess/survey.htm

To see the raw data: http://www.parkinsonsmeasurement.web...ss/results.xml

To see an up to date summary: http://www.parkinsonsmeasurement.web...ss/summary.htm

For a nice graphic showing the current situation, see the attachment.

John

Attached Images

handednesstableau.png (6.1 KB, 75 views)