Download Shifting from PROC TABULATE to PROC REPORT Tables

Shifting from Proc Tabulate to Proc Report Tables
O.M. UHle, PhD, MBA
Phase I '" II studies for pharmaceutical Industry sponsors and ultimately the Food '" Drug
Administration (FDA) have some limitations. Among them Is that sponsors want these reports quickly
and at minimal cost. One method of reducing the cost Is to 'hardwire' all the programming to
produce reports with minimal manual intervention. The smaller the quantity of manual Intervention
the lower the cost for a sponsor, and the faster the tum-around.
Reports for the pharmaceutical Industry has several requirements. One of which Is to present a
maximum of informaHon in a minimal space. OVer the past several years Proc Tabulate has
produced a condensed table of summary results from Phase 1/11 studies. A maJor drawback to
Tabulate has been the requirement that heavy editing was required to produce the centerpiece
table. Proc Report, along with version 6.12, offers some Improvements that Tabulate alone was
lacking.
The major difference here Is that Tabulate calculates descriptive statistics for output, whereas Report
communicates from a variety of procedures. This paper will compare the output from the two SAS
procedures. The programming approach was used to produce the output for Report. A major
element of the Report.
A benefit gained from the Report table Is one available from Version 6.12, that permits output of pvalues from Proc GLM to complete a 'Results table'. this has prospects of eliminating a major
element of editing to insert p-values for treatments and covarlates from GLM.
What Is presented here Is a revision to existing firmware that has been used for several years and
submitted to the FDA on many occasslons. The shift is from Tabulate to Report, and the editing factor
-- and the manual Intervention in the 'Results table' has been reduced substantially.
160