23-06-2012, 12:03 PM
Data Collection Methods
Data Collection Methods.ppt (Size: 119 KB / Downloads: 166)
Where do data come from?
We’ve seen our data for this lab, all nice and collated in a database – from:
Insurance companies (claims, medications, procedures, diagnoses, etc.)
Firms (demographic data, productivity data, etc.)
Secondary Data
Secondary data – data someone else has collected
This is what you were looking for in your assignment.
Secondary Data – Examples of Sources
County health departments
Vital Statistics – birth, death certificates
Hospital, clinic, school nurse records
Private and foundation databases
City and county governments
Surveillance data from state government programs
Federal agency statistics - Census, NIH, etc.
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May be out of date for what you want to analyze.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?
Primary Data - Limitations
Do you have the time and money for:
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?
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.