What Is Data Collection: Methods, Types, Tools?

The process of gathering and analysing accurate data from various sources to find answers to
research problems, trends and probabilities, etc., to evaluate possible outcomes is Known as
Data Collection. Knowledge is power, information is knowledge, and data is information in
digitized form, at least as defined in IT. Hence, data is power. But before you can leverage
that data into a successful strategy for your organization or business, you need to gather it.
That’s your first step.

So, to help you get the process started, we shine a spotlight on data collection. What exactly
is it? Believe it or not, it’s more than just doing a Google search! Furthermore, what are the
different types of data collection? And what kinds of data collection tools and data collection
techniques exist?

What is Data Collection?

Data collection is the process of collecting and evaluating information or data from multiple
sources to find answers to research problems, answer questions, evaluate outcomes, and
forecast trends and probabilities. It is an essential phase in all types of research, analysis, and
decision-making, including that done in the social sciences, business, and healthcare.

Accurate data collection is necessary to make informed business decisions, ensure quality
assurance, and keep research integrity.

During data collection, the researchers must identify the data types, the sources of data, and
what methods are being used. We will soon see that there are many different data collection
methods. There is heavy reliance on data collection in research, commercial, and government
fields.

Before an analyst begins collecting data, they must answer three questions first:

 What’s the goal or purpose of this research?

 What kinds of data are they planning on gathering?

 What methods and procedures will be used to collect, store, and process the information?

Additionally, we can break up data into qualitative and quantitative types. Qualitative data
covers descriptions such as color, size, quality, and appearance. Quantitative data,
unsurprisingly, deals with numbers, such as statistics, poll numbers, percentages, etc.

Why Do We Need Data Collection?

Before a judge makes a ruling in a court case or a general creates a plan of attack, they must
have as many relevant facts as possible. The best courses of action come from informed
decisions, and information and data are synonymous.

The concept of data collection isn’t a new one, as we’ll see later, but the world has changed.
There is far more data available today, and it exists in forms that were unheard of a century
ago. The data collection process has had to change and grow with the times, keeping pace
with technology.

Whether you’re in the world of academia, trying to conduct research, or part of the
commercial sector, thinking of how to promote a new product, you need data collection to
help you make better choices.

Now that you know what is data collection and why we need it, let's take a look at the
different methods of data collection. While the phrase “data collection” may sound all high-
tech and digital, it doesn’t necessarily entail things like computers, big data, and the internet.
Data collection could mean a telephone survey, a mail-in comment card, or even some guy
with a clipboard asking passersby some questions. But let’s see if we can sort the different
data collection methods into a semblance of organized categories.

What Are the Different Data Collection Methods?

Primary and secondary methods of data collection are two approaches used to gather
information for research or analysis purposes. Let's explore each data collection method in
detail:

1. Primary Data Collection:

Primary data collection involves the collection of original data directly from the source or
through direct interaction with the respondents. This method allows researchers to obtain
firsthand information specifically tailored to their research objectives. There are various
techniques for primary data collection, including:

a. Surveys and Questionnaires: Researchers design structured questionnaires or surveys to

collect data from individuals or groups. These can be conducted through face-to-face
interviews, telephone calls, mail, or online platforms.

b. Interviews: Interviews involve direct interaction between the researcher and the
respondent. They can be conducted in person, over the phone, or through video conferencing.
Interviews can be structured (with predefined questions), semi-structured (allowing
flexibility), or unstructured (more conversational).
c. Observations: Researchers observe and record behaviors, actions, or events in their natural
setting. This method is useful for gathering data on human behavior, interactions, or
phenomena without direct intervention.

d. Experiments: Experimental studies involve the manipulation of variables to observe their

impact on the outcome. Researchers control the conditions and collect data to draw
conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships.

e. Focus Groups: Focus groups bring together a small group of individuals who discuss
specific topics in a moderated setting. This method helps in understanding opinions,
perceptions, and experiences shared by the participants.

2. Secondary Data Collection:

Secondary data collection involves using existing data collected by someone else for a
purpose different from the original intent. Researchers analyze and interpret this data to
extract relevant information. Secondary data can be obtained from various sources, including:

a. Published Sources: Researchers refer to books, academic journals, magazines, newspapers,

government reports, and other published materials that contain relevant data.

b. Online Databases: Numerous online databases provide access to a wide range of secondary
data, such as research articles, statistical information, economic data, and social surveys.

c. Government and Institutional Records: Government agencies, research institutions, and

organizations often maintain databases or records that can be used for research purposes.

d. Publicly Available Data: Data shared by individuals, organizations, or communities on

public platforms, websites, or social media can be accessed and utilized for research.

e. Past Research Studies: Previous research studies and their findings can serve as valuable
secondary data sources. Researchers can review and analyze the data to gain insights or build
upon existing knowledge.

Data Collection Tools

Now that we’ve explained the various techniques, let’s narrow our focus even further by
looking at some specific tools. For example, we mentioned interviews as a technique, but we
can further break that down into different interview types (or “tools”).

 Word Association
The researcher gives the respondent a set of words and asks them what comes to mind when
they hear each word.

 Sentence Completion

Researchers use sentence completion to understand what kind of ideas the respondent has.
This tool involves giving an incomplete sentence and seeing how the interviewee finishes it.

 Role-Playing

Respondents are presented with an imaginary situation and asked how they would act or react
if it was real.

 In-Person Surveys

The researcher asks questions in person.

 Online/Web Surveys

These surveys are easy to accomplish, but some users may be unwilling to answer truthfully,
if at all.

 Mobile Surveys

These surveys take advantage of the increasing proliferation of mobile technology. Mobile
collection surveys rely on mobile devices like tablets or smartphones to conduct surveys via
SMS or mobile apps.

 Phone Surveys

No researcher can call thousands of people at once, so they need a third party to handle the
chore. However, many people have call screening and won’t answer.

 Observation

Sometimes, the simplest method is the best. Researchers who make direct observations
collect data quickly and easily, with little intrusion or third-party bias. Naturally, it’s only
effective in small-scale situations.

The Importance of Ensuring Accurate and Appropriate Data Collection

Accurate data collecting is crucial to preserving the integrity of research, regardless of the
subject of study or preferred method for defining data (quantitative, qualitative). Errors are
less likely to occur when the right data gathering tools are used (whether they are brand-new
ones, updated versions of them, or already available).

Among the effects of data collection done incorrectly, include the following -

 Erroneous conclusions that squander resources

 Decisions that compromise public policy

 Incapacity to correctly respond to research inquiries

 Bringing harm to participants who are humans or animals

 Deceiving other researchers into pursuing futile research avenues

 The study's inability to be replicated and validated

When these study findings are used to support recommendations for public policy, there is
the potential to result in disproportionate harm, even if the degree of influence from flawed
data collecting may vary by discipline and the type of investigation.

Let us now look at the various issues that we might face while maintaining the integrity of
data collection.

Issues Related to Maintaining the Integrity of Data Collection

In order to assist the errors detection process in the data gathering process, whether they were
done purposefully (deliberate falsifications) or not, maintaining data integrity is the main
justification (systematic or random errors).

Quality assurance and quality control are two strategies that help protect data integrity and
guarantee the scientific validity of study results.

Each strategy is used at various stages of the research timeline:

 Quality control - tasks that are performed both after and during data collecting

 Quality assurance - events that happen before data gathering starts

Let us explore each of them in more detail now.

Quality Assurance
As data collecting comes before quality assurance, its primary goal is "prevention" (i.e.,
forestalling problems with data collection). The best way to protect the accuracy of data
collection is through prevention. The uniformity of protocol created in the thorough and
exhaustive procedures manual for data collecting serves as the best example of this proactive
step.

The likelihood of failing to spot issues and mistakes early in the research attempt increases
when guides are written poorly. There are several ways to show these shortcomings:

 Failure to determine the precise subjects and methods for retraining or training staff
employees in data collecting

 List of goods to be collected, in part

 There isn't a system in place to track modifications to processes that may occur as the
investigation continues.

 Instead of detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to deliver tests, there is a vague

description of the data gathering tools that will be employed.

 Uncertainty regarding the date, procedure, and identity of the person or people in charge
of examining the data

 Incomprehensible guidelines for using, adjusting, and calibrating the data collection
equipment.

Now, let us look at how to ensure Quality Control.

Quality Control

Despite the fact that quality control actions (detection/monitoring and intervention) take place
both after and during data collection, the specifics should be meticulously detailed in the
procedures manual. Establishing monitoring systems requires a specific communication
structure, which is a prerequisite. Following the discovery of data collection problems, there
should be no ambiguity regarding the information flow between the primary investigators and
staff personnel. A poorly designed communication system promotes slack oversight and
reduces opportunities for error detection.

Direct staff observation conference calls, during site visits, or frequent or routine assessments
of data reports to spot discrepancies, excessive numbers, or invalid codes can all be used as
forms of detection or monitoring. Site visits might not be appropriate for all disciplines. Still,
without routine auditing of records, whether qualitative or quantitative, it will be challenging
for investigators to confirm that data gathering is taking place in accordance with the
manual's defined methods. Additionally, quality control determines the appropriate solutions,
or "actions," to fix flawed data gathering procedures and reduce recurrences.

Problems with data collection, for instance, that call for immediate action include:
 Fraud or misbehavior

 Systematic mistakes, procedure violations

 Individual data items with errors

 Issues with certain staff members or a site's performance

Researchers are trained to include one or more secondary measures that can be used to verify
the quality of information being obtained from the human subject in the social and behavioral
sciences where primary data collection entails using human subjects.

For instance, a researcher conducting a survey would be interested in learning more about the
prevalence of risky behaviors among young adults as well as the social factors that influence
these risky behaviors' propensity for and frequency. Let us now explore the common
challenges with regard to data collection.

What are Common Challenges in Data Collection?

There are some prevalent challenges faced while collecting data, let us explore a few of them
to understand them better and avoid them.

Data Quality Issues

The main threat to the broad and successful application of machine learning is poor data
quality. Data quality must be your top priority if you want to make technologies like machine
learning work for you. Let's talk about some of the most prevalent data quality problems in
this blog article and how to fix them.

Inconsistent Data

When working with various data sources, it's conceivable that the same information will have
discrepancies between sources. The differences could be in formats, units, or occasionally
spellings. The introduction of inconsistent data might also occur during firm mergers or
relocations. Inconsistencies in data have a tendency to accumulate and reduce the value of
data if they are not continually resolved. Organizations that have heavily focused on data
consistency do so because they only want reliable data to support their analytics.

Data Downtime

Data is the driving force behind the decisions and operations of data-driven businesses.
However, there may be brief periods when their data is unreliable or not prepared. Customer
complaints and subpar analytical outcomes are only two ways that this data unavailability can
have a significant impact on businesses. A data engineer spends about 80% of their time
updating, maintaining, and guaranteeing the integrity of the data pipeline. In order to ask the
next business question, there is a high marginal cost due to the lengthy operational lead time
from data capture to insight.

Schema modifications and migration problems are just two examples of the causes of data
downtime. Data pipelines can be difficult due to their size and complexity. Data downtime
must be continuously monitored, and it must be reduced through automation.

Ambiguous Data

Even with thorough oversight, some errors can still occur in massive databases or data lakes.
For data streaming at a fast speed, the issue becomes more overwhelming. Spelling mistakes
can go unnoticed, formatting difficulties can occur, and column heads might be deceptive.
This unclear data might cause a number of problems for reporting and analytics.

Duplicate Data

Streaming data, local databases, and cloud data lakes are just a few of the sources of data that
modern enterprises must contend with. They might also have application and system silos.
These sources are likely to duplicate and overlap each other quite a bit. For instance,
duplicate contact information has a substantial impact on customer experience. If certain
prospects are ignored while others are engaged repeatedly, marketing campaigns suffer. The
likelihood of biased analytical outcomes increases when duplicate data are present. It can also
result in ML models with biased training data.

Too Much Data

While we emphasize data-driven analytics and its advantages, a data quality problem with
excessive data exists. There is a risk of getting lost in an abundance of data when searching
for information pertinent to your analytical efforts. Data scientists, data analysts, and business
users devote 80% of their work to finding and organizing the appropriate data. With an
increase in data volume, other problems with data quality become more serious, particularly
when dealing with streaming data and big files or databases.

Inaccurate Data

For highly regulated businesses like healthcare, data accuracy is crucial. Given the current
experience, it is more important than ever to increase the data quality for COVID-19 and later
pandemics. Inaccurate information does not provide you with a true picture of the situation
and cannot be used to plan the best course of action. Personalized customer experiences and
marketing strategies underperform if your customer data is inaccurate.

Data inaccuracies can be attributed to a number of things, including data degradation, human
mistake, and data drift. Worldwide data decay occurs at a rate of about 3% per month, which
is quite concerning. Data integrity can be compromised while being transferred between
different systems, and data quality might deteriorate with time.

Hidden Data

The majority of businesses only utilize a portion of their data, with the remainder sometimes
being lost in data silos or discarded in data graveyards. For instance, the customer service
team might not receive client data from sales, missing an opportunity to build more precise
and comprehensive customer profiles. Missing out on possibilities to develop novel products,
enhance services, and streamline procedures is caused by hidden data.

Finding Relevant Data

Finding relevant data is not so easy. There are several factors that we need to consider while
trying to find relevant data, which include -

 Relevant Domain

 Relevant demographics

 Relevant Time period and so many more factors that we need to consider while trying to
find relevant data.

Data that is not relevant to our study in any of the factors render it obsolete and we cannot
effectively proceed with its analysis. This could lead to incomplete research or analysis, re-
collecting data again and again, or shutting down the study.

Deciding the Data to Collect

Determining what data to collect is one of the most important factors while collecting data
and should be one of the first factors while collecting data. We must choose the subjects the
data will cover, the sources we will be used to gather it, and the quantity of information we
will require. Our responses to these queries will depend on our aims, or what we expect to
achieve utilizing your data. As an illustration, we may choose to gather information on the
categories of articles that website visitors between the ages of 20 and 50 most frequently
access. We can also decide to compile data on the typical age of all the clients who made a
purchase from your business over the previous month.

Not addressing this could lead to double work and collection of irrelevant data or ruining
your study as a whole.

Dealing With Big Data

Big data refers to exceedingly massive data sets with more intricate and diversified structures.
These traits typically result in increased challenges while storing, analyzing, and using
additional methods of extracting results. Big data refers especially to data sets that are quite
enormous or intricate that conventional data processing tools are insufficient. The
overwhelming amount of data, both unstructured and structured, that a business faces on a
daily basis.

The amount of data produced by healthcare applications, the internet, social networking sites
social, sensor networks, and many other businesses are rapidly growing as a result of recent
technological advancements. Big data refers to the vast volume of data created from
numerous sources in a variety of formats at extremely fast rates. Dealing with this kind of
data is one of the many challenges of Data Collection and is a crucial step toward collecting
effective data.

Low Response and Other Research Issues

Poor design and low response rates were shown to be two issues with data collecting,
particularly in health surveys that used questionnaires. This might lead to an insufficient or
inadequate supply of data for the study. Creating an incentivized data collection program
might be beneficial in this case to get more responses.

What are the Key Steps in the Data Collection Process?

In the Data Collection Process, there are 5 key steps. They are explained briefly below -

1. Decide What Data You Want to Gather

The first thing that we need to do is decide what information we want to gather. We must
choose the subjects the data will cover, the sources we will use to gather it, and the quantity
of information that we would require. For instance, we may choose to gather information on
the categories of products that an average e-commerce website visitor between the ages of 30
and 45 most frequently searches for.

2. Establish a Deadline for Data Collection

The process of creating a strategy for data collection can now begin. We should set a deadline
for our data collection at the outset of our planning phase. Some forms of data we might want
to continuously collect. We might want to build up a technique for tracking transactional data
and website visitor statistics over the long term, for instance. However, we will track the data
throughout a certain time frame if we are tracking it for a particular campaign. In these
situations, we will have a schedule for when we will begin and finish gathering data.

3. Select a Data Collection Approach

We will select the data collection technique that will serve as the foundation of our data
gathering plan at this stage. We must take into account the type of information that we wish
to gather, the time period during which we will receive it, and the other factors we decide on
to choose the best gathering strategy.

4. Gather Information

Once our plan is complete, we can put our data collection plan into action and begin
gathering data. In our DMP, we can store and arrange our data. We need to be careful to
follow our plan and keep an eye on how it's doing. Especially if we are collecting data
regularly, setting up a timetable for when we will be checking in on how our data gathering is
going may be helpful. As circumstances alter and we learn new details, we might need to
amend our plan.

5. Examine the Information and Apply Your Findings

It's time to examine our data and arrange our findings after we have gathered all of our
information. The analysis stage is essential because it transforms unprocessed data into
insightful knowledge that can be applied to better our marketing plans, goods, and business
judgments. The analytics tools included in our DMP can be used to assist with this phase. We
can put the discoveries to use to enhance our business once we have discovered the patterns
and insights in our data.

Let us now look at some data collection considerations and best practices that one might
follow.

Data Collection Considerations and Best Practices

We must carefully plan before spending time and money traveling to the field to gather data.
While saving time and resources, effective data collection strategies can help us collect
richer, more accurate, and richer data.

Below, we will be discussing some of the best practices that we can follow for the best results
-

1. Take Into Account the Price of Each Extra Data Point

Once we have decided on the data we want to gather, we need to make sure to take the
expense of doing so into account. Our surveyors and respondents will incur additional costs
for each additional data point or survey question.

2. Plan How to Gather Each Data Piece

There is a dearth of freely accessible data. Sometimes the data is there, but we may not have
access to it. For instance, unless we have a compelling cause, we cannot openly view another
person's medical information. It could be challenging to measure several types of
information.

Consider how time-consuming and difficult it will be to gather each piece of information
while deciding what data to acquire.

3. Think About Your Choices for Data Collecting Using Mobile Devices

Mobile-based data collecting can be divided into three categories -

 IVRS (interactive voice response technology) - Will call the respondents and ask them
questions that have already been recorded.

 SMS data collection - Will send a text message to the respondent, who can then respond to
questions by text on their phone.

 Field surveyors - Can directly enter data into an interactive questionnaire while speaking
to each respondent, thanks to smartphone apps.

We need to make sure to select the appropriate tool for our survey and responders because
each one has its own disadvantages and advantages.

4. Carefully Consider the Data You Need to Gather

It's all too easy to get information about anything and everything, but it's crucial to only
gather the information that we require.

It is helpful to consider these 3 questions:

 What details will be helpful?

 What details are available?

 What specific details do you require?

5. Remember to Consider Identifiers

Identifiers, or details describing the context and source of a survey response, are just as
crucial as the information about the subject or program that we are actually researching.

In general, adding more identifiers will enable us to pinpoint our program's successes and
failures with greater accuracy, but moderation is the key.
6. Data Collecting Through Mobile Devices is the Way to Go

Although collecting data on paper is still common, modern technology relies heavily on
mobile devices. They enable us to gather many various types of data at relatively lower prices
and are accurate as well as quick. There aren't many reasons not to pick mobile-based data
collecting with the boom of low-cost Android devices that are available nowadays.