Page 76 - DLIS401_METHODOLOGY_OF_RESEARCH_AND_STATISTICAL_TECHNIQUES

Seema Sharma, Lovely Professional University Unit 5: Research Techniques and Tools

Unit 5: Research Techniques and Tools Notes

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
5.1 Nature of Data
5.2 Methods of Data Collection
5.3 Summary

5.4 Keywords
5.5 Review Questions
5.6 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit, you will be able to:
• Define nature of data.

• Explain primary data collection methods.
• Describe general format and page format.
• Define types of interview.

Introduction

Data refers to information or facts usually collected as the result of experience, observation or
experiment or premises. Data may consist of numbers, words, or images, particularly as measurements
or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as a lowest level of abstraction
from which information and knowledge are derived.
You might be reading a newspaper regularly. Almost every newspaper gives the minimum
and the maximum temperatures recorded in the city on the previous day. It also indicates the
rainfall recorded, and the time of sunrise and sunset. In your school, you regularly take
attendance of children and record it in a register. For a patient, the doctor advises recording
of the body temperature of the patient at regular intervals.
If you record the minimum and maximum temperature, or rainfall, or the time of sunrise and
sunset, or attendance of children, or the body temperature of the patient, over a period of
time, what you are recording is known as data. Here, you are recording the data of minimum
and maximum temperature of the city, data of rainfall, data for the time of sunrise and sunset,
and the data pertaining to the attendance of children.
As an example, the class-wise attendance of students, in a school, is as recorded in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1 Class-wise Attendance of Students
Class No. of Students Present
VI 42
VII 40

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 71