Analysis Components

This section contains information about ARS components used to define and describe analyses. As described in the Analysis section, each analysis is defined as an instance of the Analysis class, which contains a set of attributes that, together, describe and define the analysis.

Analysis Class Attributes and Associated Component Classes

As shown in this diagram, the attributes of the Analysis class can be grouped broadly according to the function they perform in defining or describing the analysis.

• Identification Attributes are used to identify and describe the analysis.
• Characterization Attributes are used to characterize the analysis.
• Input Data Attributes are used to specify the analysis variable that is the main focus of the analysis, and to define criteria for selection of the subjects and data records to be included in the analysis.
• Computation Attributes are used to describe the calculations that are performed to produce results for the analysis, including specifications of how other variables or result values contribute to the analysis.
• Result Attributes are used to represent the results of the analysis.

The diagram also shows that there are generally 3 types of attribute—attributes shown:

• Without any link contain a single value.
• With a link labeled "is a/an" or "each is a/an" contain the attributes of an instance of the component class named at the end of the link.
• With a link labeled "references a/an" or "each references a/an" contain an identifier value that identifies a standalone definition of the component class named at the end of the link. This allows definitions of the referenced components to be reused in multiple analyses.

Each of the component classes is described in a section of this user guide: the ReferencedAnalysisOperation class is described in the Operation section and all other classes are described in a section with the same name as the class. A section describing each "Common Component Class" can be found within the Common Components section of this guide, and a section describing each "Analysis Component Class" can be found within this Analysis Components section.