Data from the Congo.

One of the things I'm doing this summer is data entry. At the moment I've data in from 15 villages, another 11 are still to come (the enumerator teams are still in the field). This data has been collected over the last seven months (non-stop work by the teams) and includes data from the village mapping we did in each of these villages. That is, we conducted a survey with ALL the households in these villages (more here). Moreover, we also did networked lab-in-the-field experiments in each of these villages (more here). On average each of the piles on the picture below contains 200 sheets: around 150 for the household surveys (each household is a sheet), and another 50 for the games. The mapping survey and manual can be found here and here, respectively. The player survey can be found here. If you count well, though, the picture below has 17 piles. In addition to the data from the 15 villages I collected two additional things:

1. When in the Congo last December-March2012 I got to know the chairman of the committee responsible for the displaced people in the territory of Kalehe. In brief, they keep lists of what types of migrants are in which villages. I got access to this list and spend a day photo-copying it.
2. For my dissertation I look mainly at rural-to-rural migration. It is very well possible that migration to larger cities is very different. To learn about this I hired an enumeration team that kept track of in-migration to Bukavu (I'll write a short other blogpost on this). So that is yet another pile of data.
    

Data from 15 villages in South Kivu carefully
kept in my bedroom.

I decided (at least for now) not to hire somebody to do the entry. There are three reasons for this. First, I don't trust somebody else to do it. It is very easy to make a mistake. Moreover, the data has also more qualitative components to it, and it's in French. Secondly, by doing it myself I hope to get a 'feel' for the data. Finally, it allows me to spot mistakes quicker, and immediately take up contact with the enumerator teams. Actually, the above is not really true. I did found a great RA who is currently also filling out data: my mom. She rocks!