Agriculture section Student statistical clerk Sub-section large scale and A2 farms Week Activities carried out 1 Introduced to almost every section of the agency Shown and taught the main activities of the section Sorting questionnaires according to province district and farm number Arranging questionnaires in ascending order 2 begun editing and coding questionnaires of record type 3&4 which concerns livestock changes at the farm Classification of animals into heifers oxen cows in milk and other classifications. Comparing the cattle composition of the yester year and those of present year Note changes in stock of the yester to the present year. Cattle population being our main objective so the questionnaire is designed to provide the relevant information. 3 the whole unit moved to record type 9 which is building and infrastructure. This module shows the changes in fixed assets in the whole year and how they came about. The main mistakes had to do with mathematical error and classification of the assets and or tools. Also the geo- code that is the exact location of the farm. After editing, the questionnaires are to be sorted back to their respective places. 4 continued editing record type 9 but this time I was in the A1 farms. A1 farms were a bit simpler as compared to the A2 farms, A2 farms are more complicated because of their infrastructure they build. The main difficulty we all faced as a group was that of inconsistency in questionnaire design. Shown how to estimate for the schemes that were not provisioned for. That is those that were not captured by the enumerator. Estimation was under the supervision of the officers. Prepared the hides and skins questionnaire but it was mainly a draft since the final or the original one is to be compiled by the supervisors 5. We moved to a new record type Record type 1(employment module)on this one we centre on the employees being paid by the farm owner whether in currency or in any form of payment. We only centre on those that are paid, relatives and children are regarded as mere dependants to the farm owner even if they are being paid We want to ascertain those who earn a living from working at the farm, thus we do not include individuals who are not involved in the day to day activities at the farm. As a group we faced a couple of problems for example relative that reside at the farm and receive some form of payment, where exactly are they supposed to be placed. are they mere dependants or we are going to treat them as workers if so why? For workers who were paid in nonmonetary terms, we also had conversion problems. To those who were paid in grain, converting the values from grain to currency could increase the possibility of error since prices differ from province to province. 6 moved to editing record 9(building and machinery module) We also had to take account of the improvements done by the farmer eg barns built, tobacco curing houses. Started preparing my preliminary report 7 I was entering data; although I was told it was not part of my core duties because of staff shortages we were to do some of the data entry. The system we used is called CS Pro which was developed at zimstat Data entry uses only figures we do not enter any form language that is we do not enter comments by the enumerator. Prepared reports to be showcased at the Harare agricultural and business show, also took the items to be used to the show grounds. Was grunted a single day to attend the national event that is the Harare agricultural and business show. 8 the whole section moved to correcting errors (data cleaning) This is the vital period in the section where we look at: Data entry mistakes like punching a 3 instead of a 5 Duplication of serial number or information on farms Mathematical errors that were left out in the editing and cording phase. Misplacement of questionnaires eg an A1 farm that would have been placed in the A2 Assumptions played a major role in this phase eg an individual may state that he bought single beast for 5000 us dollars which is unrealistic .so we would have to assume that he was referring to South African rands. 9 we have moved to try and clear backlogs So we moved out data starting from 2003 to 2009 which had not been processed. Started with the record type 3 that is cattle population. Though our main concern is the cattle composition we also look at other livestock populations for example rabbits, sheep, goat chickens and bees. 10 moved back to errors but now we are attending to problems of serial numbers duplication and missing serial numbers. Whilst the officers are preparing the tabulations for final reports we assisted by pulling out the relevant questionnaires for them.