Importing data from Epi Info to R statistical software

To import data from Epi Info™ to R, you need functions for reading data stored by Access, the new data format used by Epi Info.

These functions are provided in package RODBC. So first, you need to donwload and install package RODBC in R.

Once package RODBC installed, two functions are needed :

• odbcConnectAccess(), to open connection to Access database (Epi Info Project);
• sqlFetch(), to read data table inside the current project.

For exemple, if you want to import data from data table named "principal" inside "ISAAC2F" project, which is in "My Documents" folder, use the following codes:

> IsaacProject <- odbcConnectAccess("C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/My documents/ISAAC2F.MDB")

> IsaacPrincipal <- sqlFetch(IsaacProject,sqtable="principal",colnames=FALSE,rownames=FALSE)
 
Data table "principal" is then be stored in "IsaacPrincipal" R object (1366 subjects and 10 variables):

> dim(IsaacPrincipal)
[1] 1366   10

And variables names are kept:

> dimnames(isaacprincipal)[[2]]
 [1] "identification" "dateentrevue"   "age"            "sexe"           "sifflements"    "crisessiff"   
 [7] "eczema"         "poids"          "taille"         "PM2_5"        

You can then apply statistical tests and statistical models available on R.
 
Remark: these functions  for reading Access data table are only available on R for Windows.