UDP- Collecting the Data Lesson

Collecting the Data

There are four basic methods of collecting data.

 

Four basic methods for collecting data.

Observation: Data collection using observation does not entail personal contact. Counting the number of vehicles crossing an intersection every hour would be a good example of observational data gathering.

Interview: This takes place usually between two people where one is called the interviewer and the other is the interviewee or respondent. This method is usually chosen when it is convenient to talk to the respondents directly. For example, if we wanted to determine whether people were happy with the way they were treated by sales staff.

Questionnaire: A questionnaire is a predetermined set of questions given to a number of respondents to complete. This instrument is good for getting information from many people. Questionnaires are also appropriate for getting information from people that are spread over a wide area and that are not easy to contact face-to-face. A questionnaire should have a short explanation of what your research is about. As with all data collection methods, questionnaires should always adhere to ethical and moral codes of conduct. An example of a questionnaire in use is the national population census.    

Databases: Sometimes we can use information that is already stored in a database so that we don't actually have to find the data. Databases are organized data sets that contain data already collected by someone.  

Publicly released datasets can be found from many sources.

  • Government: In recent years governments have begun to release some of their data to the public. Many governments host special (open) government data platforms for the data they create. For example, the US government started to release its datasets. Similar data portals exist in the UK, Brazil, Kenya, and many other countries.  
  • Organizations: Other sources of data are large organizations. The World Bank and the World Health Organization, for example, regularly release reports and data sets.
  • Science: Scientific projects and institutions release data to the scientific community and the general public. Open data is produced by NASA, for example, and many specific disciplines have their own data repositories, some of which are open.

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