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Coaching researchers: Why avoiding spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel as the way to store your research data is likely not a good idea

07 October 2013

Coaching researchers: Why avoiding spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel as the way to store your research data is likely not a good idea

Don't get me wrong, spreadsheets are as useful as a software can get. That being said, using spreadsheets as the primary means of collecting your data is inherently a bad idea. Here are some of the reasons:

  1. No protection: once the data is entered, it is very easy to either delete it or replace a correct value with an incorrect one.
  2. No versioning: If you keep adding data to the same spreadsheet, you really cannot go back in time to know who made which modifications at which time. Google sheets is better in this regarding since it does have a versioning system that is mostly reliable.
  3. Hard to share: sure you can place a spreadsheet in a system such as Dropbox, where multiple people can access it, but if any two people attempt to change the same spreadsheet at the same time there will be a conflict. Google sheets is slightly better in this regard since you can share the sheet with other collaborators who will then be able to see if somebody if somebody else is editing the sheet at the same time.
  4. Privacy: if you collect sensitive data, such as biomedical data, spreadsheets are not safe at all and could expose information that could compromise the privacy of patients.

The solution then is to use one of the many electronic data capture systems, out there which will take care of each of these problems. RedCap is one that comes to mind as being not only very good but also increasingly used by a number of researchers conducting prospective data collection.

by Ricardo Pietrobon

About Me

My name is Ricardo Pietrobon and I am interested in big data and situated cognition applied to immersive distance education.