User:Diglio.simoni/sandbox

The PhenX Toolkit is a catalog of measures related to complex diseases, phenotypic traits and environmental exposures. These measures were selected by working groups of experts using a consensus process. Use of PhenX measures facilitates combining data from a variety of studies, and makes it easy for investigators to expand a study design beyond the primary research focus. The Toolkit is funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) with additional support from the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The measures are made available to the scientific community at no cost.

Objectives
For genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and other studies involving human subjects, the use of standard measures can facilitates cross-study analysis. Such analyses compare independent findings to validate results or combine studies to increase sample size and statistical power. This increased  power makes it possible to identify more subtle and complex associations such as gene-gene and gene-environment interactions.

PhenX Measures
The Toolkit has a broad scope and currently provides assessments for 21 research domains, including: Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Substances, Anthropometrics Cancer, Cardiovascular, Demographics, Diabetes, Environmental Exposures, Gastrointestinal, Infectious Diseases and Immunity, Neurology, Nutrition and Dietary Supplements, Ocular, Oral Health , Physical Activity and Physical Fitness, Psychiatric, Psychosocial, Reproductive Health, Respiratory, Skin, Bone, Muscle and Joint, Social Environments, Speech and Hearing. The Toolkit also provides 7 collections of measures directed toward SAA research. There are two SAA core collections (Tier 1 and Tier 2) and six specialty collections including: Assessment of Substance Use and Substance Use Disorders, Substance-specific Intermediate Phenotypes, Substance Use–related NeurobehavioralandCognitive Risk Factors, Substance Use–related Psychosocial Risk Factors, Substance Use–related Community Factors, Substance Use–related Comorbidities and Health-related Outcomes.

The Toolkit
For each measure, the system provides a brief description, the protocol for measurement with supporting images and tables, the reasons for including the protocol in the toolkit, details about training and equipment, and selected references. Users can browse research domains, measures or collections, search using a “Smart Search” or a full text search, collect  measures of interest in “My Toolkit”, and request custom data dictionaries and custom data collection worksheets.

The Toolkit offers recommended measures that will facilitate downstream cross-study analyses. The Toolkit can be particularly helpful when an investigator wants to expand a study to include measures that are outside his or her primary area of expertise. Whereas study specific measures are needed to address the primary research goal, common measures are needed to increase the overall impact of the study; both types of measures are important to overall study design.