I am currently working with our data entry staff to start data entry for my baseline survey. Throughout the day, I keep finding new reasons to be appreciative of the staff, who do a difficult, tedious job while holding themselves to a high standard of accuracy. Here are just a few reasons data entry staff deserve the respect of the research teams they work with:

·         They have to learn the logic of a survey in one day that took a week for surveyors to learn.

·         They have to work with surveys that have been battered by surveyors, up to three stages of editing, three stages of transportation, and storage in Tamale during dusty harmittan.

·         They have to try to decipher surveyor’s sometimes-awful handwriting.

·         They have to remember how to consistently enter responses that surveyors record inconsistently.

·         They don’t eat lunch till 1:30.

I find this last particularly impressive, as I consider it to be a drastic sacrifice to wait to eat longer than 1.  So, thank you to the data entry team!!