DATA COLLECTION For IB1-ITGS By Indrani Tuesday, October 30, 2012 WHAT IS DATA COLLECTION ? Copyright Indrani@CVSL Data collection is any process of preparing and collecting data,
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Transcript DATA COLLECTION For IB1-ITGS By Indrani Tuesday, October 30, 2012 WHAT IS DATA COLLECTION ? Copyright Indrani@CVSL Data collection is any process of preparing and collecting data,
DATA COLLECTION
For IB1-ITGS
By Indrani
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
WHAT IS DATA COLLECTION ?
Copyright Indrani@CVSL
Data collection is any process of preparing and
collecting data, for example, as part of a process
improvement or similar project. The purpose of data
collection is to obtain information to keep on record,
to make decisions about important issues, or to pass
information on to others. Data are primarily collected
to provide information regarding a specific topic.
Data collection usually takes place early on in an
improvement project, and is often formalized through
a data collection plan which often contains the
following activity.
Pre collection activity — agree on goals, target data,
definitions, methods
Collection — data collection
Present Findings — usually involves some form of
sorting analysis and/or presentation.
WHERE DO DATA COME FROM?
All nice and collated in a database comes from:
Insurance companies (claims, medications,
procedures, diagnoses, etc.)
Firms (demographic data, productivity data, etc.)
Institution (student name, subject, marks)
Offices (Employee name, address, phone, salary)
Telephone Companies (Customer name, Interest)
And from many other sources
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WHERE DO DATA COME FROM?
Take a step back – if we’re starting from scratch,
how do we collect / find data?
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Secondary data
Primary data
SECONDARY DATA
Secondary data – data someone else has collected
This is what you were looking for in your assignment.
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SECONDARY DATA – EXAMPLES OF
SOURCES
Health
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departments
Vital Statistics – birth, death certificates
Hospital, clinic, school, nurse records
Private and foundation databases
Central and State governments
Surveillance data from state government
programs
Federal agency statistics - Census, NIH,
etc.
SECONDARY DATA – LIMITATIONS
What did you find on the frustrating side as you
looked for data on the state’s websites?
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SECONDARY DATA – LIMITATIONS
When was it collected? For how long?
May be out of date for what you want to analyze.
May not have been collected long enough for
detecting trends.
E.g. Have new anticorruption laws impacted Russia’s
government accountability ratings?
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SECONDARY DATA – LIMITATIONS
Is the data set complete?
There may be missing information on some
observations
Unless such missing information is caught and
corrected for, analysis will be biased.
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SECONDARY DATA – LIMITATIONS
Are there confounding problems?
Sample selection bias?
Source choice bias?
In time series, did some observations drop out over
time?
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SECONDARY DATA – LIMITATIONS
Are the data consistent/reliable?
Did variables drop out over time?
Did variables change in definition over time?
E.g. number of years of education versus highest degree
obtained.
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SECONDARY DATA – LIMITATIONS
Is
In some cases, may have to use “proxy
variables” – variables that may approximate
something you really wanted to measure. Are
they reliable? Is there correlation to what you
actually want to measure?
E.g. gauging student interest in U.W. by their
ranking on FAFSA – subject to gamesmanship.
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the information exactly what you need?
SECONDARY DATA – ADVANTAGES
No need to reinvent the wheel.
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If someone has already found the data, take
advantage of it.
SECONDARY DATA – ADVANTAGES
It will save you money.
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Even if you have to pay for access, often it is cheaper
in terms of money than collecting your own data.
(more on this later.)
SECONDARY DATA – ADVANTAGES
It will save you time.
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Primary data collection is very time consuming.
(More on this later, too!)
SECONDARY DATA – ADVANTAGES
It may be very accurate.
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When especially a government agency has collected
the data, incredible amounts of time and money went
into it. It’s probably highly accurate.
SECONDARY DATA – ADVANTAGES
It has great exploratory value
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Exploring research questions and formulating
hypothesis to test.
PRIMARY DATA
Primary data – data you collect
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PRIMARY DATA - EXAMPLES
Surveys
Focus groups
Questionnaires
Personal interviews
Experiments and observational study
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3 METHODS FOR COLLECTING
DATA
Mgt. 450
THREE MAJOR TECHNIQUES FOR
COLLECTING DATA:
1.
3.
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2.
Questionnaires
Interviews
Observation
USING THESE DATA GATHERING METHODS
Each method has advantages and problems. No
single method can fully measure the variable
important to OD
Examples:
Questionnaires and surveys are open to selfreport biases, such as respondents’ tendency to
give socially desirable answers rather than
honest opinions.
Observations are susceptible to observer
biases, such as seeing what one wants to see
rather than what is actually there.
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USE MORE THAN ONE
Because of the biases inherent in any datacollection method, it is best to use more than one
method when collecting diagnostic data.
The data from the different methods can be
compared, and if consistent, it is likely the
variables are being validly measured.
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DEMOGRAPHICS
about the people you are gathering
data from is important.
Collect the specific demographics necessary. Some
examples
Age
Gender
Income level
Ethnic background
Status (student, teacher, visitor)
Be
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Information
careful not to collect demographics that are not
specific to your data collection purpose.
QUESTIONNAIRES:
Questionnaires are one of the most efficient ways
to collect data.
They contain fixed-response questions about
various features of an organization.
These on-line or paper-and pencil measures can
be administered to large numbers of people
simultaneously.
They can be analyzed quickly.
They can be easily be fed back to employees.
Questionnaires can be standard based on
common research or they can be customized to
meet the specific data gathering need.
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QUESTIONNAIRES; THERE ARE
DRAWBACKS;
Responses are limited to the questions asked in
the instrument.
They provide little opportunity to probe for
additional data or ask for points of clarification.
They tend to be impersonal.
Often elicit response biases – tend to answer in a
socially acceptable manner.
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INTERVIEWS
Interviews are probably the most widely used
technique for collecting data in OD.
They permit the interviewer to ask the
respondent direct questions.
Further probing and clarification is possible as
the interview proceeds.
This flexibility is invaluable for gaining private
views and feelings about the organization and
exploring new issues that emerge during the
interview.
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INTERVIEWS
Interviews may be highly structured, resembling
questionnaires, or highly unstructured, starting
with general questions that allow the respondent
to lead the way.
Interviews are usually conducted one-to-one but
can be carried out in a group.
Group interviews save time and allow people to
build on other’s responses.
Group interviews may, however, inhibit
respondent’s answers if trust is an issue.
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INTERVIEWS / FOCUS GROUPS
Another unstructured group meeting conducted
by a manager or a consultant.
A small group of 10-15 people is selected
representing a larger group of people
Group discussion is started by asking general
questions and group members are encouraged to
discuss their answers in some depth.
The richness and validity of this information will
depend on the extent that trust exists.
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DRAWBACK TO INTERVIEWS
They can consume a great deal of time if interviewers
take full advantage of the opportunity to hear
respondents out and change their questions accordingly.
Personal biases can also distort the data.
The nature of the question and the interactions between
the interviewer and the respondent may discourage or
encourage certain kinds of responses.
It take considerable skill to gather valid data.
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SAMPLE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
1.
3.
4.
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2.
How do management and non-management
employees interact in the office?
How do you know when you have done an
excellent job?
How do non-management employees learn
about organizational change?
If you could change one or two things about the
way management and non-management
personnel interact, what would you change?
OBSERVATIONS
Observing organizational behaviors in their
functional settings is one of the most direct ways
to collect data.
Observation can range from complete participant
observation, where the OD practitioner becomes
a member of the group under study to a more
detached observation using a casually observing
and noting occurrences of specific kinds of
behaviors.
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ADVANTAGES TO OBSERVATION:
They are free of the biases inherent in the selfreport data.
They put the practitioner directly in touch with
the behaviors in question.
They involved real-time data, describing behavior
occurring in the present rather than the past.
They are adapting in that they can be modified
depending on what is being observed.
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PROBLEMS WITH OBSERVATION
Difficulties interpreting the meaning underlying
the observations.
Observers must decide which people to observe;
choose time periods, territory and events
Failure to attend to these sampling issues can
result in a biased sample of data.
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OBSERVATION PROTOCOL
A decision needs to be made on what to observe.
Example:
Observe how managers and employees interact
in the office.
Observe who has lunch with whom. (Do
managers and non-managers eat together? Do
executives have a private lunch area?)
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PRIMARY DATA - LIMITATIONS
Uniqueness
May not be able to compare to other populations
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PRIMARY DATA - LIMITATIONS
Do you have the time and money for:
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Designing your collection instrument?
Selecting your population or sample?
Pretesting/piloting the instrument to work out
sources of bias?
Administration of the instrument?
Entry/collation of data?
PRIMARY DATA - LIMITATIONS
Researcher error
Sample bias
Other confounding factors
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DATA COLLECTION CHOICE
What you must ask yourself:
Will the data answer my research question?
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DATA COLLECTION CHOICE
To answer that
You much first decide what your research question is
Then you need to decide what data/variables are
needed to scientifically answer the question
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DATA COLLECTION CHOICE
If that data exist in secondary form, then use
them to the extent you can, keeping in mind
limitations.
But if it does not, and you are able to fund
primary collection, then it is the method of
choice.
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END OF PACK
Thank you
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