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Data Gathering
BRFSS conducts an annual, nationwide telephone survey where 400,000 adult participants are interviewed about their health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions, and use of preventative services. The data collected is qualitative data and is also confidential by nature. Insufficient data would result in incomplete surveys due to unanswered questions because sufficient data for the survey can only be provided by survey participants. -
Data Migration
The IT system administrator was tasked with physically transferring the stored data over to a new location. The data set and codebook was copied onto a flash drive and imported into the SQL system at the new location. It is unclear whether the IT system administrator referenced here is the person who was responsible for storing the original data. If not, there are legal and ethical requirements that may have been violated if unauthorized personnel had access to sensitive data. -
Data Storage
Survey data was stored in CSV format in the BRFSS database on a secure hard drive in a securely locked room. The person or persons responsible for organizing and storing the data was not disclosed. -
Data Implementation
A new data analyst was hired to re-analyze the master data set. It was discovered that the CSV file contained characters that were unreadable by the SQL databases resulting in data loss due to improperly imported rows that occurred during data migration, causing inequalities in expected import quantity versus actual import quantity. This event diminishes the quality of the data due to improper handling. The newly hired data analysts likely is not authorized to handle the data either.