Data capture, Presentation and Entry
Computers involve storage and manipulation of data, in
order to collect the required data, either the user must enter data, or it must
be inputted automatically.
The manual method of entering data will involve some
kind of data capture form or questionnaire. When designing these forms, factors
such as collecting the right data, not being ambiguous and ensuring the data is
or a process able type should be taken into account. Also it should not be too
long, as this can look off putting, and it should look official. When the data
written on the data capture form is returned to the organisation, it will
probably need to be entered into a computer system. This computer system should
have data validation functions, so it knows what the rules are and can check
it. For example range checks, format checks, length checks, character checks
and presence checks.� There should also
be data verification checks, which verify the user entered the data correctly,
for example double entry checks.
When data is collected by an automatic method, that data
is inputted as it is collected, many automatic data collection methods don�t
require a special input screen, but most system require the data to be in a
particular form before it can be read.
Some methods of collecting data would be using optical
mark recognition (OMR) which is the use of shading in boxes or particular areas
or a form to represent different options. Optical character readers (OCR) are
the reading of the shape of the individual characters. And Magnetic ink
character recognition (MICR) is when characters are printed on documents in
magnetic ink.