This is the first step of any data related processes.
Data is the star of the show (not just data but quality data ) and without it you have nothing to work on.
Bearing this in mind, we can use the following questions to guide us on collecting data.
1. What is the purpose of data that will be collected / what are you trying to achieve?
2. What kind of data do you need?
3.Where will you get the data from?
4. Considering the kind of data that will be collected, what kind of methods are suitable to collect the said data?
Methods to collect primary data:
- Surveys:
This could be directly or indirectly. Methodologies under this could be interviews and/or questionnaire.
Questions administered on questionnaires or interviews should be:
a. Simple,easy to understand and answer(Avoid technical jargons)
b. Should observe privacy of the respondent.Personal questions, medical or financial questions/information should be anonimyzed and collected in an ambiguos way e.g instead of asking an exact figure for salary, you could give a range in which the respondents salary could fall into.
Surveys are suitable for social sciences e.g politics, psychology.
2. Experimentation:
This process involves setting up experiments and revieweing the results.Conclusions are drawn and neccessary changes effected/adopted.
Experiments is benefitial for natural sciences e.g medical sciences, biology, agriculture.
Methods to collect secondary data:
This data is available and therefore easy to obtain.However, that comes with another caveat.
You need to verify afew things.
- How realible is the data?
- How relevant/suitable is the data to your objective?
- Is the data adequate?
Happy reading!
