Healthcare businesses striving to gain a competitive edge can benefit a great deal by partnering with an experienced healthcare market research firm that can equip them with actionable insights. It will help them to modify their product and service designs/optimize services and curate targeted marketing/sale campaigns with better results. Among the various market research services, survey data processing is a crucial one. Herein researchers help design convert and tabulate raw data sets curated from different channels into formats that are easy to understand and analyze. Continuing on the topic, read on as we discuss the ins and outs of survey data processing.

Overview

Surveys, be it patient surveys, device-market surveys, or healthcare practitioners surveys, are an integral component of market research, however, responses collected from the field or online at first are often inconsistent, incomplete, and at times filled with redundancies. Market researchers assist in organizing and filtering these responses into well-defined sets for the data analysis stage. Survey data processing is an intricate process of converting raw data sets into an organized format through tabulation. It involves data cleaning, data formatting, and data tabulation to make raw data usable.

Importance

Survey data processing makes unorganized data sets into a structured and clean layout, allowing seamless data analysis. In market research, unorganized or ‘dirty’ data is the biggest obstacle in curating meaningful insights. It can even lead to inaccurate results. Survey data processing helps save time and effort in correcting mistakes during the analysis phase.

Steps in Survey Data Processing

The steps in the survey data processing can be described as:

Survey Designing

This is essentially a part of survey programming. Designing targeted questionnaires that ask the right questions to the right audience is one of the crucial aspects that affect survey data processing. It is a complex process that requires defining objective outlines, choosing the right survey format (closed or open-end market research) and deciding a channel to approach respondents.

Data Entry and Capturing

This step involves organizing collected responses (from paper and online surveys) in suitable digital formats such as SPSS, MySQL, MS Excel, and SAS. Data entry and capturing is a tedious task requiring a blend of powerful devices and sharp skills to process massive volumes of data.

Quality Control

Once the data entries are filed in suitable formats, now it's time to check for errors and filter quality data for data analysis. Quality control includes categorization of data into predefined criteria, verifying that all fields are accurately filled, and checking for inconsistencies such as missing/duplication/incomplete data sets.

Data Tabulation

Data tabulation refers to the organization of data sets into relevant categories according to predefined criteria. This is a vital step to draw statistics that allow healthcare businesses to analyze responses and make strategies to improve their operations.

Final Word

Healthcare businesses looking to find their audience or exploring new geographies for expansion can benefit greatly from survey data processing services. You can also opt for research support functions like survey programming or even explore open-end coding market research services. Partner with a reliable healthcare market researcher that understands your requirements and leverages the latest technologies for providing ace survey programming services.