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10 ways to make sure inputting data happens properly (Boring but VERY important) (09 Jun 08)
Hardly the most riveting topic, you may say - but you’d better understand it if you care about quality of your surveys. And a reader sent a really good piece about it.
There’s an old acronym in IT circles you may have heard: GIGO.
It stands for “Garbage In – Garbage Out”.
This applies to this subject in spades – as it did to a piece I recently wrote about how everybody underestimates the importance of survey interviewers.
The gist of what I said was simple.
You can pay all the attention you want to sampling, designing the questionnaire and interpreting the result, but if your interviewers let you down, you’re in trouble. Your findings will be based on erroneous information and it’s all a waste of time.
I also commented that people underestimate the importance of the stage where the information you collect is inputted into survey software.
Tim Williams
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