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Section Types of Data and Data Collection Methods Qualitative and quantitative data There are basically two types of data: qualitative and quantitative. Simply put, qualitative data are usually descriptive text or words and quantitative data contain numbers. Qualitative approaches, if conducted in a rigorous manner, require more skill than many quantitative approaches. Qualitative approaches provide text data, which are more time consuming to analyze, even with new text management software, such as NVIVO, AtlasTI and AnSWR (available free at http://www.cdc.gov). The coding of text data is a very subjective process and open to various types of coding problems, such as investigator bias or a lack of inter-coder reliability. Quantitative approaches provide increased rigour by investigating relationships at known levels of probability. They also are easier to analyze because researchers use standard, replicable techniques. Common analysis software includes SPSS, Stata and SAS. One criticism of quantitative data is that they lack the context to understand exactly what the numbers mean. For example, to know if it is good or bad when an indicator of reported sex crimes goes up, one needs to know more about the context: Is the number going up because more sex crimes are occurring, or is it going up because more women trust the police and choose to report sex crimes? If the resources and the schedule allows, combining methodologies often provides the most useful results. By combining archival information and administrative data with original qualitative and quantitative survey data, you have the advantage of examining the situation from several vantage points (triangulation). This approach can increase the level of professionalism, credibility and legitimacy. Good-quality analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data can be expensive. The extent to which you can use both types of data will depend on the budget and the human resources available. The goals of professionalism and legitimacy should be the guide, whatever approach is used. There is more detailed information on data analysis in Section 9. Administrative, archival and secondary data are used in many assessments. These data can be qualitative and quantitative and come from a variety of sources, including narrative reports from government, administrative data routinely collected by government ministries, other government statistics, the constitution, laws and legislation, as well as statistics and data gathered by domestic NGOs, international organizations and academics. It can be very useful to undertake a data mapping exercise to inventory and assess the data available from various sources. This exercise can be completed by a qualified academic or other expert. Support from the government makes the process much faster and easier. The results are then made available to the steering committee for examination. One tool available to assist with this process is the IMF’s Data Quality Assessment Framework. More information on this tool is available at www.dsbb.imf.org/Applications/ web/dqrs/dqrsdqaf.
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Planning a Governance Assessment: A Guide to Approaches, Costs and Benefits