Analysis Environment
The Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Process and analyse the full range of sociodemographic, physical, psychosocial and cognitive data that are available in the Contributing Research Studies (CRS) which you are approved to access.

It is important for you to understand and have read the guide before accessing the Analysis Environment. Upon approval of your application, DPAU will provide the DPAU account details for you to access the Analysis Environment.

The Data Portal runs its Analysis Environment through a secure VPN connection accessible via Cisco AnyConnect that is available to download here with your DPAU account . By analysing the data in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, you are working on DPAU's servers – meaning there is no physical transfer of data to researchers. The processing capacity enables you to work with large numbers of records and integrate these with the other data modalities that exist in the DPAU CRS. This solution also offers researchers the freedom to conduct their analyses anywhere with an internet connection.

Important
To be able to visit the Analysis Environment, a secure VPN connection for DPAU is required Go to the Analysis Environment
Analysis Environment User Guide Data Access Agreement Data Deposit Agreement


Pre-loaded software

Each virtual desktop comes with a suite of pre-loaded statistical and data management software as standard, including STATA, SPSS, SAS, R, R Studio, Notepad++, Python, DBeaver and Office.

Common Packages for STATA, R or Python would already be available. Specific packages can be installed upon request, see details here .

For studies needing specialist or bespoke software, it is possible to create a dedicated desktop to include personalised installation of software. Such specification should be made clear during the application process, see details here .


Use your own data

Researchers are also able to integrate external data they have approval for, in order to analyse this alongside DPAU CRS data. The process of bringing such data in is facilitated by a simple upload to the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, however, a researcher must declare in their application that they wish to include their own data in a project.

Files can be uploaded to the DPAU Analysis Environment, see details here .


Secure Environment

The data remains on the DPAU servers throughout - raw data files provided via the Analysis Environment are not allowed to be physically extracted, only outputs such as results files, scripts and material for publications are permitted. Requests to take files out can be made through the Analysis Environment, see details here .

A high level of security is in place which requires a secure VPN connection, two-factor authentication via a username & password and mobile authenticator to access the DPAU Analysis Environment.