Exactly what it says: a dataset that has a rectangular format in which all the rows have the same columns. Usually rows come from individuals or from occasions and the columns are variables. There may be “missing data” in some columns for some rows but every row has the same columns/variables even if some values may be missing. Also sometimes called, perhaps with some or more condescension “spreadsheet data” or, even worse, “Excel data” or “SPSS data”. A “data table” or “datatable” is another synonym though those tend to be used more respectingly!
Details #
Rectangular data is easy to think about and, in principle at least, easy to process and lends itself well to conventional statistical methods. Clearly most qualitative data has no such imposed structure (hence sometimes called “ill structured data”, “list data” or simply “narrative” or “qualitative” data with the general assumption it won’t have any rectangular form.
Of course, real life MH and therapy data is never purely rectangular. In the quantitative world this fact means that much MH/therapy is stored in RMDBs: Relational, Multi-dimensional DataBases which consist of many individually rectangular datatables which are “relationally” linked, for instance one table might contain unchanging demographics and details about therapists, another might contain potentially changing data for them: current and historical contracts/sessions, the two would be linked to each therapist by a unique ID per therapist, other tables would contain information about clients, again often a single table for unchanging data: name, date of birth perhaps, then perhaps a number of ones for different changing data: residence, occupation, therapy episodes, therapy sessions, change measure completions etc.
Try also #
Spreadsheets
Database systems
Chapters #
Touched on in Chapter 8 about service level data.
Online resources #
None currently
Dates #
First created 30.xi.23.
