Data Collection = Check!

Post date: Dec 12, 2012 5:41:36 PM

Dec 1, 2012

The data collection went pretty well during the past two weeks. We split up into two groups to collect data and we were using different methods. One of our teams was following by address number to go through the stores and other group of us was doing street by street. They used a map to keep track of all the streets they have been down. We were glad that we used three weeks to collect all the stores data in the five sestieri of historic center of Venice, including Canneregio, San Marco, San Polo, Santa Croce and Dorsoduro. The data we collected are store name, address, store type, operating hours, whether it closes for lunch and any helpful information for notes.

The best thing about going out to collect data is that we actually go down every single address and all the streets in Venice and see the most beautiful side of the city without being crowed by tourists. And also when we went through all the streets, we get a better view of how each island connects to the other and where is the most quiet, originally Venetian neighborhood. We started to feel like real Venetians because we know all the streets, know where to find the right shops and where the decent restaurants are. It was also surprising that our fieldwork went pretty fast; we have finished these five sestieri in fifteen days. But then the most painful part is to deal with the data entry. Since we were too efficient in collecting data (we did five sestieri in this year while last year’s group did one), our data entry took us a long time. It takes us five days to input them. Overall, we enjoy the data collection time although we were tired after walking for a long day, but this would be our special and best memories in our lives. The interesting thing is that sometimes people will give us trouble and are suspicious of our behavior; I mean, holding a clipboard, writing stuff down about their stores and also taking pictures are not normal things that happen in Venice. But we just tried our best to explain that we are do a project for our school about the stores in Venice.