Fidelity in Data Collection Posted on October 19, 2007 Martica Hall (bio) discusses the importance of checking data as it comes in.

Anytime you’re collecting psychophysiological data, there are all sorts of issues associated with fidelity. Is your equipment operating correctly? Is the equipment calibrated? Are you really doing what you said you were gonna do in terms of testing things?
You have to be very purposeful if you’re doing anything besides paper-and-pencil measures. And even with paper-and-pencil measures, how do you really know that those data have been collected? Because I do know of cases where it’s been learned at some point in the future that the data are made up by an RA, who was having personal problems at the time.

So I have colleagues who audit their data so that they have an RA come in and review a file with them, and you look at it and is it all in the same handwriting? which is something that would’ve never occurred to me until this one colleague told me. Now, you can better bet, I look at those files and I see is the handwriting different because you don’t know. If you’re not there, you don’t know, so you have to be very, very careful.
We’re seeking truth, and you have to have a very high bar, so our lab is very, I’m a very, I’m a spreadsheet and manual of operations kind of gal. The lab laughs because I always want to spreadsheet. I want it on a spreadsheet. I want it electronic. I want it to be transferred to me so I can look at the data and make sure that it’s being collected in the way that I had made a promise, to NIH or whomever. You’ve made a promise. It’s a contract to do something, and you want to make sure it’s being done that way.

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