RESEARCH

1. Lecturer: Mrs Precious Chanaiwa

2.  It involves:
 selection
 training
 supervision
 Validation
 Evaluation
Of the persons involved in the collection of data

3. SELECTION
 Involves careful selection of people who will
conduct the interviews or the respondents from
where data is going to be collected
 Type of data to be collected will influence the
type of persons to be recruited e.g. qualitative
data that involves probing questions would
require experienced interviewers

4. TRAINING
 Involves training personnel that will go out to
collect data
 Training helps to achieve uniformity in data
collection
 Training covers aspects such as the approach,
administering of instruments, probing,
recording

5. SUPERVISION
 Interviewers need to be supervised to ensure
that they are proceeding on schedule
 There is need to keep control of day-to-day
activities
 Unethical practices might occur e.g. when field
workers complete questionnaires themselves.

6. VALIDATION
 Quality of data collect is critical
therefore there is need for
supervisor to check accurately for
mistakes that might occur during
data gathering and recording.

7. EVALUATION
 All data gathered have to be evaluated to
check for consistency.
 How many people completed the
questionnaire, quality of the interviews
 Two errors might occur:
 Intentional errors- falsehood and non-
response
 Unintentional errors- misunderstanding,
fatigue, attention loss

8.  The process of checking the quality of data
gathered during fieldwork, thus converting it
into useful format for further analysis
 Involves:
 Validating
 Editing
 Coding
 Data entry
 Data cleaning

9. VALIDATING
 An analysis to check whether proper
procedures were followed in the collection of
data using different instruments
 Factors to look for include:
 Fraud
 Screening
 Procedure
 Completeness
 Courtesy

10. EDITING
 Checking of mistakes emanating either from
interviewer or respondent
 Editing can start when the supervisor visits the
fieldwork when data is being collected and
after completion of questionnaires for
omissions and inaccuracies
 Further editing might be done at the central
office of the research firm

11. CODING
 Process of assigning a code, symbol, or a
number to each possible answer.
 It is easier for closed ended questions where
pre-coding can be conducted
 Closed ended questions would require coming
up with themes as same questions can be
responded to differently but with the same
meaning

12. CODING-cont’
Missing data is usually caused by:
 The question did not apply to the respondent
 The respondent refused to answer the question
 The respondent did not know the answer to
the question
 The respondent or interviewer forgot to record
the answer

13. DATA ENTRY
 Involves the direct input of coded data into
software packages that will allow the
researcher to analyse and transform the raw
data
 Software packages include SPSS for
quantitative data and NVIVO 7 for qualitative
data

14. DATA CLEANING
It is the process of checking data
before starting data analysis
especially if data was entered
manually in a computer

15. DATA CLEANING- cont’
Done to detect obvious errors such as:
 Does the number of questionnaires match the
number of respondents
 Calculation of minimum and maximum variables to
check whether they are outside the expected range
 Is there consistency in the number of respondents
who provided answers
 Comparison of recorded answers with the values in
the data matrix for a few selected questionnaires

16. Options for large percentages of missing
answers:
 Casewise deletion- discard any cases with
missing responses
 Pairwise deletion- use all the cases with
complete responses for specific calculation
 Rules of thumb- establish your own rules as
to when to include or discard individual
questionnaires