Might this work suit you?

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Obtaining and cleaning data, and making use of it.

I am looking for someone to help me with the exacting (needs accuracy and consistency), tedious (there is a lot of it, and it is very repetitive) and challenging (needs imagination) work of digging up data, cleaning it and making it consistent, and finding ways of making use of it.

Working from home. Timing and amount of work negotiable. No deadlines.

You would need a good Internet connection, and a strong desire to learn computer programming if you are not already adept.

Rate of pay low to begin with, depends on how much you get done in an hour once I get to know you.

Ralph Lucas
The Good Schools Guide

Sounds a lot like what I do for a living. I work with data management at a medical research department. To me, that job description sounds very interesting, except for the part "finding ways of making use of it" [the data]. It is very important to me that my work has an inherent meaning and I'm not burdened with justifying what I do.

Possibly it would interest me. What are the details? Are you talking about existing database cleansing? Or are you talking about collecting data and data entry?

I'm a bin man. . . Last month I was a waiter. .. the month before that a Barman. Before that a Labourer, and I can garentee you before Xmas I'll be a factory worker.

But a computing job. . . Must say can't do it, I need to move.

Still very interesting seeing posts like this!

what kind of data are we talking about? scientific? financial? market research?

i've had a course in fortran and a course in visual basic. got A's in both. learning programming would be easy. the repetitive part doesn't sound fun, but the creative part might make up for that. i'd like more info. also, i type 40 wpm. if that's too slow, forget i asked.

I can definitely do this kind of work, but I need some more info to prove that this is legit.

Here are some examples of work I am doing or would like to do.

We have a very large database of information on students and universities, their previous qualifications, results and careers. There is lots of miscoding of subjects, which I am working to correct. I have 100,000 lines of spreadsheet to work through, working out what the coding should be. As I get to know the data I see ways of improving the coding structure, and implement those. At the end of the day I will work to understand what the data is telling me about university courses, and build programs to share this understanding with the public.

The Welsh publish inspection reports on schools, but do not summarise them. I want to learn to use Alchemyapi or similar to do this.

Local authorities publish information on schools, such as admissions and catchment areas. Standard info but different formats for each LA. I want to find ways of capturing this data

Who is this work for? Is it for yourself or your employer? What kind of database are you working with?

I have a lot of experience working with RDMS and am a programmer too. I have over 15 years experience with information reporting.

It sounds like you have a major reporting project to do, and you are getting data from different sources. This means you will need a process in place to keep this data up to date. So I don't think you are talking about a one off project here.

Making no promises, I think the work has no natural end to it.

Our finances do, though. We are a small outfit. So we are not looking for a full time employee.

Would suit, for instance, someone who is tied to other part time commitments such as caring or raising a family, or someone starting out who wants an 'I did that' on their CV.