Working with ABCD data: start here

Working with ABCD data: start here#

Last reviewed: October 2026 (ABCD Release 7.0). Things change quickly; if you spot something out of date, please open an issue or post on the Discussion Board.

This section walks through the full life cycle of an ABCD project. It pulls together official documentation, tools, and peer-reviewed best-practice guides, organized in the order you’ll actually need them.

Important

This is an unofficial, community-maintained resource. When anything here disagrees with official documentation, the official documentation wins. The main official sources are:

The big picture#

Since Release 6.0 (2025), ABCD data are no longer distributed through the NIMH Data Archive (NDA). Everything now lives on the NBDC Data Hub, which also hosts the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study. The current release is ABCD 7.0, released May 2026, DOI 10.82525/8f3w-5260.

Step

What you do

Where

Page

0. Explore

Browse variables before you have access

DEAP data dictionary, semantic search

Working with the data

1. Get access

Submit a Data Use Certification (DUC), pass the training

NBDC Data Hub

Getting access

2. Access

Learn what data exist, which release, where each type lives

NBDC Data Hub, DEAP, Sandbox

Accessing the data

3. Download

Tabulated data, imaging files, previous releases

DEAP, Query Wizard, Globus

Downloading the data

4. Analyze

Build datasets, compute scores, model the data

NBDCtools, ABCDscores, DEAP, R/Python

Working with the data

5. Disseminate

Acknowledge, cite the DOI, share code, respect privacy rules

Your paper, GitHub/OSF

Disseminating your work

Throughout

Read the practical guides before you design analyses

Peer-reviewed papers

Best-practice guides

New-trainee checklist#

  • Find out whether your PI or lab already has an NBDC group DUC. Trainees must be added to a PI’s group DUC rather than applying on their own.

  • Make sure you log in with your institutional email, using the same email that is on the DUC.

  • Complete the NBDC Responsible Data and Biospecimen Use Training (90% pass on the quiz, renewed yearly).

  • Confirm with your PI/IT that you’ll store data on a NIST SP 800-171–compliant system (or plan to use the NBDC Sandbox).

  • Read the Data Use Certification rules. Notably, no ABCD data in generative AI tools/LLMs, and no reported cells with fewer than 10 participants.

  • Bookmark the ABCD documentation and the release notes for your release.

  • Read at least the Saragosa-Harris et al. (2022) practical guide before designing your analysis.

  • Consider preregistering your analysis plan before you look at the outcome data.

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