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Review & Clean Your Data

Clean Data Collected

After reviewing your registry data, you may find you need to contact participants to correct data entry errors. If data are missing, explore why the fields are not completed. It is important to determine whether the data entry error is a user error or an issue with a question or the data collection tool.

Questions to help identify the cause of data entry errors:  

  • Did the participant feel uncomfortable completing the field? Why?
  • Did the participant understand the question?
  • Did the participant attempt to complete the field?
  • Did technical difficulties arise? What were the technical difficulties?
  • What other explanation might describe the data entry error?

If you identify problems in the data collection process, fix the issues and then contact the participants and ask them to enter the missing information. If many participants have the same issues with entering information (and it’s not a data collection problem you can resolve), develop a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page that clarifies the data input process, and make it easily accessible on the registry website.