Essentials of Data Collection
 As exciting as research can be, if your data are to be sound and statistically robust, there are a few essential points you should bear in mind when you're collecting your data:
- perhaps most importantly, you should try and remain as objective as possible. Although every researcher wants their experiments to 'work', you shouldn't force a result
- for your data to be as robust as possible, you should record your measurements using exact descriptive terms. For example, describing the stem extension of a plant as 'about 20cm' is not helpful - if you've gone to the trouble of measuring it, be exact!
- to avoid bias, wherever possible measure your results using tried and tested methods and instrumentation
- a review of literature should give you an idea of what other researchers have done and how they did it. However, in some situations it may not be possible to do this; for example if you're recording the percentage leaf scorch of Acer species. In this case, you could invite several people to estimate the percentage scorch and take an average of their results.
The most common methods of data collection in science are experimental, observational or opinion-based. |
Introduction > Planning Your Research > How Will You Collect Your Data? > Essentials of Data Collection