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Data Influencing Factor

Local Influences and Data Influencing Factors

Working for first hand data in rural setting, is it easy to dig out the right picture? A prepared set of questions or exhaustive questionnaire. which will work?

Answers are varied in subjective interviews even in same set of demographics.

Are they having different experiences, in same situation or exposed differently. What is it which enables their brain to gives different feedback? In a strange comparison with a person living in urban place with small village for a same interview we found other influencing factors. What are they?

  1. Political influence
  2. Social influence
  3. Close group influence
  4. Family influence

Are some of them..

One interesting factor arise, is it good to carry on study while elections are going on?

Type of elections will certainly bring effect on it. National elections are least one when you are directly involved , but local assembly and local body elections bring more involvement in rural setting. Experienced it in recent elections , and compared with all three type of elections in different demographics.

Volunteers or field Staff

What is critical when we talk about field staff.

  1. Selection
  2. Education
  3. Training

Selection and education are the activities can be performed on fixed parameters , rules can be set out for this . any one who qualifies can be taken in. most critical is training. Initial  training will help to identify the week field staff. Those shall be filtered out for separate course of customized training.

One dry run is always recommended in real time situation. Filtered field staff shall be allowed for dry run after sufficient and satisfactory course of training. After this loop , if one finds gap ,files staff shall be changed for particular study.

Regular check in real time situation is strongly advisable for keep an eye on the direction of study.

Subject and The Location

While working on primary data I found the subject or objective of  research is critical and plays vital role on multiple factors . These factors may be location, demographic, local influences, education level, and exposure.

We were working simultaneously on two different locations of one same district.

Having distance of around 60 kilometers. Most of the factors to select the each location were common, demographics, approach, distance from major city, demographics of major city as well as set of local influences. But surprisingly the behavior of sample was completely different and so the data out come.

It became point of research why the data out come is different and misleading for some of the parameters. After analyzing some identical samples ‘ Exposure’ was the factor which hit the result. One of the location was so much exposed by the particular subject that primary data become secondary and misleading. The answers started getting manipulated.

An interesting scenario was there in Madhya Pradesh after new government formed . while collecting data for health related expenses from farmers , most of them answered keeping it in mind the loan waiver announced by government.  They shared manipulated data of earnings and expanses  to avail government loan waiver scheme , thinking this data will be supplied to government agencies and will be used to financial benefits. It is volunteer who can handle it and record right data and make research successful.

The subject and location are critical to each other. The location selection of particular subject needs lot of scanning before going forward.

Will discuss more on other factors, with stories. ..

Rural Data Collection, Problems, Solutions, Experience

Being a ground researcher what are the problems one may face. My objective to introduce ground researcher with some of them they may encounter.

I travelled in length and breadth of rural areas in Rajasthan , interacted a lot. Learning and understanding mind sets of local people is great thing for ground research, to get the right answer.

Authentic primary data leads to authentic research.   When it comes to primary data from rural setting most of us try to convert secondary data available to primary to fit in. Every data collected has its own relevance of research ,this secondary  data either old or broad in terms for other usage. Sometimes it is so particular that does not serve the purpose of research. For focused or particular research data requirement is different. To address this need the modes of data requirement shall be designed in such way.

Rural areas have different mindset when one tries to access and collect the data of desired parameters from individual. Person going to collect the data shall understand the importance and effect of primary data on further study or research. Ability to convince the source of data is key factor. This will eliminate misleading data collections or minimize it.

A robust mechanism to collect primary data is always a big challenge , how to build it and its functioning will take on study.

Problems Areas:

  1. Subject or Objective
  2. Location identification
  3. Local influences
  4. Data Influencing factors  
  5. Volunteers or data collectors.
  6. Data Authenticity  & verification
  7. Training
  8. Language
  9. Logistics
  10. Technology /Connectivity
  11.  Data Transfer
  12. Exposure of sample and saturation

In coming blogs will discuss more on Subject or Objective, Location identification, Local influences.