Running your own project data collection and management

Much is discussed about collecting and maintaining public health nursing data in the context of large, adequately resourced organizations, but what are the data management issues in constrained-resource environments and smaller public health nursing projects?  Many times the researcher or project manager must maintain their own data system – both designing the project and the data system to support project development and evaluation.  Many project management concepts help with data management, though some specialized questions are needed for adapting the general concepts of project management.  Development of a series of questions and documenting the answers guides the process of data system design.

Once what data is needed is decided and described, what are the tools for data collection?  There are numerous basic tools that will work for managing data which set the data up for analysis and project development.  The data collected also has to be secured, both digitally and physically, which also needs to be integrated into the planning and development process for the data system.  The data system design needs to include these considerations of the monetary cost and also costs of data security, integrity and analysis. Several questions need to be consider while reviewing the various types of low cost and low maintenance tools available for collecting, storing and analyzing public health data.

Finally, always a consideration is what data outputs are needed to support project evaluation.  Some standard outputs will be discussed in context of what data system abilities are needed.