On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Caroline Li <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've heard that entering data manually into spreadsheets (which I've > always done) is frowned upon. Is there free software available for data > entry? Apparently some people use Google Forms, but maybe there's an option > better geared to scientific data? > I prefer entering data via a database management system because they can be configured to offer a lot of quality control to prevent bad data from being entered. We have tended to use MS Access, but there is an open source equivalent in Libre Office Base. Any data entry into a database management system will at least enforce types (you can't accidentally enter a letter when it should be a number) and will force the data to be properly structured. By doing data entry through "forms" you can make entry easier and more robust. For example, instead of typing in a species name you could have the user select it from a drop down (no more typos) and if a value is logically bounded between 0 and 100 you could prevent it from taking other values.
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