NBDC Data Tools: Building Analysis-ready Datasets From ABCD and HBCD Releases in R and Python

NBDC Data Tools provides reproducible R and Python workflows that transform ABCD and HBCD releases—hundreds of tables with tens of thousands of variables—into analysis-ready datasets.

• Why it matters: Preparing NBDC tabulated files for specific analyses is difficult because releases are large, metadata-heavy, and require reusable, reproducible data-prep pipelines for new versions.
• What they did: The suite includes NBDCtools (R) for dataset construction, nbdctools (Python) that can call the R workflow or build natively, and NBDCtoolsData for release metadata; users define datasets in code by study, release, and variables/tables.
• The result: The tools locate standardized files, join tables on participant and session identifiers, convert types, attach labels, and optionally recode non-response codes as missing, enabling rerunnable scripts from approved releases to analysis-ready data.

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