Samoa - Samoa National Population and Housing Census 2006

how to edit on field and in the office to data processing

Data editing took place at a number of stages throughout the processing, including:
a) Office editing and coding
b) During data entry
c) Structure checking and completeness
d) Secondary editing
e) Structural checking of SPSS data files
Detailed documentation of the editing of data can be found in the "Data processing guidelines" document provided as an external resource.




At SBS, a team of Office editors was responsible for reviewing each completed questionnaire that came into the office and checking for missed questions, skip errors, fields incorrectly completed, and checking for inconsistencies in the data. In problematic EA, the Office editors liased with the ACEO:Census-Survey and recommended re-enumeration in areas where coverage was not good or quality of the questionnaire was poor. In 2006, the re-enumeration was carried out in some of the villages in the Apia urban region and some areas of Vaitele mainly due to the unavailability of household members during the allocated enumeration period, and, also due to poor quality of data collection.

On the other hand, the good completed questionnaires were passed on by the Office editors to the Office coders who then performed their coding processes of all the questionnaires in a sequential order. After each questionnaire is coded, the Office coders recorded their dates of completion and then passed on the coded questionnaires to the Data processing team for their controls and data entry processes.

The Data processing team is lead by the Computer Manager and Programmer who also works closely with the ACEO Census-Surveys in monitoring the flow of work. The Computer Manager/Programmer designed the data entry and editing programs, conducted the data entry training and then monitored the data entry and made progress reports. Any problems relating to coding at the data entry will be reported to the ACEO Census-Surveys for improvement.

The Computer Manager/Programmer ran data structural checkings and monitored completeness of data entries. Data verfication had also been closely monitored and double data entry was made at 50%. The ACEO Census-Surveys produced the Tabulation plan in which the Computer Programmer also used to monitor structural checks and data quality.

Any detalied information can be asked directly to the Computer Progammer/Manager of SBS or check into our website at http://www.sbs.gov.ws

Like field allocation, the data processing was also organized in clusters adoptng the four major regions in Samoa. Each region contains a number of political districts, each district contains a number of villages and each village has a number of enumeration areas. Each level follows a sequence order from 1 to the highest number.

Data were processed accoding to clusters with each cluster being processed as a complete unit through each stage of data processing. Each cluster goes through the following steps:
1) Questionnaire reception
2) Office editing and coding
3) Data entry
4) Structure and completeness checking
5) Verification entry
6) Comparison of verification data
7) Back up of raw data
8) Secondary editing
9) Edited data back up

After all clusters are processed, all data is concatenated together and then the following steps are completed for all data files:
10) Compile dataset in CSpro 3.3 and run frequency tables for all variables
11) Recoding of variables needed for analysis/report
12) Structural checking
13) Data quality tabulations
16) Production of analysis tabulations

Details of each of these steps can be found in the data processing documentation, data editing guidelines, data processing programs in CSPro and tabulation guidelines.

Data entry was conducted by 10 data entry operators in full-time shifts, supervised by 2 data entry supervisors, using a total of 12 computers (10 data entry computers plus 2 supervisors' computer). All data entry was conducted at the SBS office using manual data entry. For data entry, CSPro version 3.3 was used with a highly structured data entry program, using system controlled approach that controlled entry of each variable. All range checks and skips were controlled by the program and operators could not override these. A limited set of consistency checks were also included in the data entry program. Open-ended responses ("Other" answers) were coded and entered.

Structure and completeness checking ensured that all questionnaires for the cluster had been entered, were structurally sound, and that women's questionnaires existed for each eligible woman.
50% verification of all variables was performed using independent verification, i.e. double entry of data, with separate comparison of data followed by modification of one or both datasets to correct keying errors by original operators who first keyed the files.

After completion of all processing in CSPro, all individual cluster files were backed up before concatenating data together using the CSPro file concatenate utility. The CsPro was used to run analysis tables and further analysis were conducted in other software like the MORTPAK and FERT.

Certain variables were recoded for use as background characteristics in the tabulation of the data, including grouping age, education, geographic areas as needed for analysis.