If the BCIO has been used when writing the study protocol, this task will be much easier because all the entities that have been included in the study will already have been identified and it will be a matter of entering data in results tables formed using those entities.
Otherwise, the following steps should be followed:
- Use BCIO Search to match every variable measured in the study to a BCIO entity that corresponds to a) a construct and b) a measure of that construct. Note the importance of distinguishing between constructs and measures of constructs. In some cases, the measure need not be stated because it is obvious (e.g. measurement of age), but in most cases both the construct and the measure will be required.
- The entities should be used to describe all aspects of the study, intervention and context: a) inclusion and exclusion criteria, b) study population characteristics for the study as a whole AND any study groupings (e.g., arms in randomised trials), c) details of interventions and comparison conditions, d) setting, etc.
- For each entity go to the details page in BCIO Search and then use the browser extension for your bibliographic reference tool (e.g., Zotero, Endnote) to copy the URL into your bibliographic database in a form that can then be used with your word processor to cite the URL in your study write-up.
If you use the Paper Authoring Tool (PAT), this process will be much easier as you are prompted in the tool to include the ontology entities for all key constructs and you simply go to BCIO Search and use the 'Copy to Clipboard' button to copy and past the entity into PA
