A little bit about me
Hi! I’m Amy, a Data Processing (DP) Executive at Yonder Data Solutions. I’ve been a part of our fantastic DP team for the past two years, and it’s been an incredible experience! Until recently, I was the “baby” of the team, but I’ve happily passed that title on as our team continues to grow.
Outside of work, I enjoy playing the trumpet (or cornet, depending on the occasion) and the piano. I’m also a proud co-owner of one cat and multiple chickens!
Behind the data curtain
Since joining Yonder Data Solutions, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a diverse range of projects, including campaign trackers, CATI surveys, and omnibuses for clients such as Citizens Advice and the AA. The survey topics we cover are incredibly varied, from the more standard market research subjects like banking and political priorities to more unconventional ones, like fisheries and people’s strangest fears.
While I’ve often considered a career in market research – thanks in part to my love for jigsaw puzzles and piecing together the full picture from smaller parts – it wasn’t until I joined Yonder Data Solutions that I realised just how much work goes into data processing. If you’ve never given much thought to the behind-the-scenes work that goes into surveys, you’re certainly not alone! While some of my colleagues are better placed to talk about the scripting and survey management side of things, the data processing routine has become so ingrained in my brain that it’s practically ‘muscle memory’.
Who remembers punch cards? Without data processing, your survey data would look like a long stack of those (though in a digital format, of course). Think of what we do as a form of translation – turning raw data that would be meaningless on its own into clear, easy-to-read tables. For open-ended questions, we incorporate coding into the tables and have our own expert team on hand to code the verbatim responses into usable data.
While data tables are our most common output, we can also produce SPSS files or raw data in Excel, as well as a range of specialised outputs for analytics techniques like MaxDiff and implicit association testing. You can explore some of our work here.
