Glossary of Terms
| Term | Meaning | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Concept | A piece of information about a participant. Concepts may include both the information itself (e.g., a survey response) and metadata about the information (e.g., time of collection, survey version). | - A participant’s age at time of consent - A survey question about experience of food insecurity |
| Concept set | A group of related concepts. | - The social determinants survey asks questions about whether a respondent experienced food insecurity, or only worried about experiencing food insecurity. A concept set containing both questions would represent a response to either (or both) of these questions. |
| Value | A specific data element (a number, a text string, etc.) from a concept. | - The participant’s answer to a survey question - The time and date the participant completed a survey - The version of the survey administered |
| Cohort | A population of interest, built using Boolean logic (“AND” and “OR” relationships) between concepts and concept sets. | - All participants who had both a Vitamin B12 measurement AND answered at least one of the two food insecurity questions on the social determinants of health survey. - All adults with diagnosis of diabetes |
| Dataset | A set of tables extracted from the All of Us database, chosen by specifying concept sets, and then selecting values from the concept sets to extract. | - A demographics table containing the participant’s code number and age, plus a measurements table containing a participant’s code number, Vitamin B12 serum concentration, and the time the laboratory test was collected. |