Statistical analysis in the German National Cohort (NAKO) : specific aspects and general recommendations

Abstract

The German National Cohort (NAKO) is an ongoing, prospective multicenter cohort study, which started recruitment in 2014 and includes more than 205,000 women and men aged 19–74 years. The study data will be available to the global research community for analyses. Although the ultimate decision about the analytic methods will be made by the respective investigator, in this paper we provide the basis for a harmonized approach to the statistical analyses in the NAKO. We discuss specific aspects of the study (e.g., data collection, weighting to account for the sampling design), but also give general recommendations which may apply to other large cohort studies as well.