Data Editing
Editing, Coding and Verification:
In the 2001-2002 Ethiopian Agricultural Sample Enumeration (EASE), the filled-in forms that were retrieved from 47 Branch Statistical Offices were primarily received and systematically registered at the documentation unit of the CSA head quarters in Addis Ababa. Before launching the actual editing and coding activities, the Natural Resources and Agricultural Statistics Department staff gave adequate training to the 157 editors and coders. These editors and coders carried out the manual editing, coding and verification of the filled-in EASE questionnaires in two shifts. At the outset, the editing and coding activities for the filled-in forms on area and agricultural practices took place; this was followed up by the editing and coding of the forms on the production of temporary crops (cereals, pulses, oil seeds, vegetables and root crops), livestock, farm implements, permanent crops, “Belg” and miscellaneous questionnaires region by region. For the filled-in forms on area and agricultural practices, verification was carried out on 100% basis for the first five weeks from the launching of the activity and then considering the quality performance of editor-coders the activity was dropped to 66% of the forms gradually. On the other hand, the verification activity has been carried out on 100% basis for the filled-in forms on production of the temporary and permanent crops, livestock, farm implements and all other completed forms. For the total country, the editing, coding and verification of the filled-in forms in general took about 330.6 working days. That is, the editing, coding and verification of the filled-in forms for area, agricultural practice, the production of the temporary and permanent crops, and livestock took about 198.5 working days, while that of the filled-in forms on farm implements, demographic characteristics, Belg season and the urban forms took around 132.1 working days.
Data Entry, Cleaning and Tabulation:
About 144 data encoders were assigned to undertake the data entry activity of 2001/02 EASE and it has been carried out on two-shift basis. Before the starting of the data entry operation data encoders were trained for about 5 days using computer programs developed by the Data Processing Department staff. The Programmers prepared the data entry programs using CENTRY, which is a data entry module of IMPS (Integrated Microcomputer Processing System). The data entry exercise has been carried out using 76 personal computers (PC's). Like that of the manual editing and coding activity, the filled-in forms on area and agricultural practices were entered first and this was followed by entry of the filled-in forms on the production of temporary crops, livestock, farm implements, permanent crops, “Belg” and miscellaneous questionnaires region by region till all the census data entry operations are completed. In order to ensure the quality of the data entry work, verification exercise was carried out. The entry of the filled-in forms on area and agricultural practices were verified on 100 % basis. Then the verification exercise was dropped to 66 % from the 6th week of the launching of the operation and was further reduced to 50% from the 10th week onwards by observing and assessing the magnitude of the percentage of errors. Later on verification process was carried out on 100% basis for the filled-in forms on the production of temporary and permanent crops, livestock, farm implements and all other completed forms. The verification activity was carried out through the process of re-entering the data. For the total country, the whole data entry process of the filled-in forms on area, agricultural practice, the production of the temporary and permanent crops, and livestock took around 253.1 working days, while that of the filled-in forms on farm implements, demographic characteristics, Belg season and the urban forms took about 257.9 working days. Data entered into the computer needs to be checked for completeness, consistency and validity. For this purpose computer edit programs were prepared by programmers using CONCOR, which is the editing module of IMPS. Using print-outs from these programs and referring to the filled-in census forms, corrections were made by nine trained manual data cleaning technicians. Moreover, nine other data-cleaning computer operators were involved in making the actual corrections of the data on the computer. Additionally, an intermediate set of instructions or programs were made available and applied on the data to prepare information suitable for tabulation. These programs were prepared using CSPro and IMPS software. Like IMPS Software, CSPro is used as a tool for entering, editing and tabulating data. CSA used the CSPro software for data editing and calculation of CVs. Data made ready for tabulation through the process of cleaning and intermediate programs was finally used to generate the required tables. This was done using tabulation programs developed by the senior programmers of the Data processing Department. The CENTS software, a tabulation component of IMPS, was used in producing the 2001-2002 EASE results.