4.1 Manage Data: Introduction

Overview     Introduction     Essential data management concepts    Resources   Results and next steps

Key concepts

You can maximize your monitoring investment and realize project success by remembering the following essentials:

• Have a specific plan to ensure that data will be well-documented and can be accessed, analyzed and interpreted efficiently, including well beyond the life of the data collection activity. 
• The data management approach should be designed to meet the monitoring plan's goals and directly assist with providing answers and advice on specific evaluation questions.
• Data collection, management and interpretation should be carefully linked so that knowledge about the data is documented and its quality and integrity can be ensured to meet monitoring objectives.
• Finally it is essential that the data management plan includes the step of synthesizing and summarizing in written reports in a time frame where the individuals that collected the data have fresh facts in their minds.  This step directly links to effective interpretation and reporting of program results.

Considerations

• Monitoring resources are scarce and funders will be most inclined to support field research if they are confident that data will be well-documented and accessible to others.
• As with data collection, it is important to think about data management in the context of both project-specific objectives and also how project data could help meet broader regional monitoring goals - this can only increase the value of the program and increase its likelihood to secure funding.
• Data management is the essential mechanism to establish timely data flow from collection to analysis and to ensure that strong data standards are maintained.  Adopting standards can help ensure that the project's data can be shared with other researchers and increase the likelihood of meeting key monitoring objectives in other areas.