Officers undergo data handling training

Officers listen attentively as former Government Statistician and facilitator Joseph Naesol go through the specific topics covered in a power point presentation.

STAFF of the National Statistics Office (NSO) within the Ministry of Finance & Treasury (MoFT) have concluded an intensive two weeks of training in data processing last week.

Held at the NSO conference room in Honiara, the training run from May 7-22.

Trained officers will be responsible for the data entry and processing of the National Village Resource Survey 2017-2018 (VRS) that is now nearing completion.

Facilitator and former Government Statistician Joseph Naesol said the training is necessary to equip officers with the essential skills and knowledge on how to use the data processing software and well-versed with the operation system.

“The trained staff now well armed with skills and capability in using CSPro, the software used for data entry and validation-which they trained to enter data collected from the filed using questionnaire and data has to be entered and validated in the computer.

“The questionnaire is around 44 pages, and the validation process is quite strenuous,” Mr Naesol said.

CSPro is an acronym for Census and Survey Processing System (CSPro), developed by the US Census Bureau, ICF International, and Serpro SA. The version used is 7.0.0 released on May 8, 2017.

Specific topics covered throughout the training include: CSPro structure and Meta data; Computer procedure in data entry using CSPro; Form editing guidelines; Non-sampling errors and how to control NSE; Manageable units in storing data in the computer; Going through the 2007-8 VRS, and the lessons learned to improve current VRS; House-keeping matters; Final comments on the VRS 2017-18 questionnaire.

The training was in two parts. The theoretical aspects of processing a survey, and the software CSPro in how it deals with survey data and the hands-on practical aspect in which data operators actually punch in data from completed forms into the computer using CSPro software.

“The training fully equipped the officers to have confidence in entering the VRS questionnaire, which has 14 sections, and 10 of the sections having 24 sub-tables. The VRS 2017-18 hopes to cover around 7,000 villages’ throughout the country, and processing period is envisioned to take seven months using at least 6 data operators,” Naesol said.

–SINSO PRESS

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