Scottish Inpatient Patient Experience Survey 2014 Volume 2: Technical Report

6 Data Entry and Fieldwork Quality Control

Introduction

• This section of the report provides detail on the arrangements for data entry and coding and datafile processing. In addition it discusses data checks, quality assurance processes and reliability and validity tests undertaken.

Data entry and coding

• The contractor was responsible for data entry and quality assurance of data collected during the Inpatient Survey.
• Prior to fieldwork commencing, a datafile template was sent by ISD to the contractor. The template was then used by the contractor as the format in which to send data to ISD. In advance of moving data into this format, the contractor used their own internal processes to undertake data entry and coding of the responses.
• With the exception of answers which allowed respondents to provide written comments, the Inpatient Survey contained predefined answer options in questions for respondents to tick as appropriate. Answer options corresponded to codes which were entered into the datafile to indicate which answer had been selected by respondents for each question. A copy of the questionnaire is in Appendix A.
• For questions where a written comment could be provided, guidance was provided to contractors on how to process these answers (see Appendix F). Questions which contained options for respondents to provide a written answer and approaches to coding these answers are listed below:
  • Q67a: Was there anything particularly good about your hospital stay?
  • Q67b: Was there anything that could be improved?
  • Q67c: Do you have any other comments?
• In addition to recording predefined codes and coding of comments, contractors were required to capture cases where a patient had ticked two or more answers on any question in the survey and it was unclear what the correct answer was.
• The contractor was also required to record responses where a patient answered a routing question and then continued to answer subsequent questions contrary to the routing instructions within the original routing question.

Datafile processing

• Once data had been collected and input into the required datafile format, the contractor was able to establish a raw final datafile containing all survey information including double answers and routing errors.
• In addition to producing a raw datafile containing all information collected during fieldwork, the contractor was also required to establish a cleaned version of the datafile by undertaking data cleaning. Data cleaning involved the following activities:
  • Removal of double answers and marking of these as 'missing' as the intention of the respondent could not be ascertained;
  • Cleaning of routing errors where routing instructions had been incorrectly followed and patients incorrectly provided answers; and
  • Removal of any information recorded within free text comments which could be viewed as disclosive to respondents, other patients or staff in order to comply with the Data Protection Act.
• Once a raw and clean datafile had been developed by the contractor, the file was transferred to ISD to carry out its analysis.

Quality assurance processes

• Throughout the data entry process and prior to the datafile being sent to ISD, the contractor was required to undertake data checks on data entered into the final datafile.
• Checks were made by two team members checking every tenth record to ensure that what was contained within the respondent's completed version of the survey was checked against what had been entered within the data files.

Survey routing errors

• Routing errors were cleaned within the final dataset based on questions being applicable to respondents. For example, where a patient answered a routing question and then continued to answer subsequent questions contrary to the routing instructions within the original routing question.