How to interrogate your data
As journalists and activists, Open Data – data made publicly available by governments – is hugely important to our work. The advantage of open data is you don’t have to put in a long Freedom of Information request to find out what is happening in your community. Of course, not all government public data is openly available.
To mark Open Data Day on March 7th, below are some top tips on interrogating your data for quality purposes. In order to assess the data quality ask the following questions:
- How current is the data?
- How regularly is it updated?
- Do you understand all the fields and their context?
- For how long will it be published?
- What do you know about the accuracy of the data?
- How are missing data handled?
Interested to learn more about open data for your advocacy or journalism? Sign up for our free two-part course on researching and telling stories with open data.
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