A data quality assessment is only as valuable as what happens next
A few years ago, I conducted a data quality assessment for a major international health programme, reviewing six monitoring tools across dozens of countries. The findings were familiar. What wasn't familiar was what happened next
The Best Time to Catch a Data Problem Is Day One
A paradata check on day one of fieldwork in Uganda flagged three unusual patterns before they could spread across the dataset. None were automatically a problem, but all were worth understanding.
Data Quality Is Easier to Protect Than to Recover
Two inherited datasets, two problems no one caught at the point of collection. What slowing down to ask “does this actually make sense” revealed, and why how you respond matters as much as catching it.
The Best Survey Tool Isn’t the Simplest One
When a field team flags a survey question as too difficult, the instinct is to simplify it. But sometimes the real fix isn’t the tool, it’s the training.