dhis2-users team mailing list archive

[Jason Pickering <jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx>]

I think as Andrew points out, this is really a local decision to be
made, and thus the developers have allowed implementers to choose
whether to save them or not. For some organizations the zeros are
important. In other situations, the "Complete" button serves to
indicate that the data entry form has been filled out completely and
truly. In this case, the zeros are implied in the data values
themselves, but may not have been entered, simply to keep the size of
the database down, and thus increase overall performance of the
system. If the zeros are important, you can save them.

I have implemented for one of my clients a method of partitioning the
davalue table, whereby all datavalues are saved with zeros, but all of
the zero values are partitioned into a separate table with a database
trigger. Normally for day-to-day analysis the zeros are not important,
but there may be situations in certain types of analyses when they
become important. The two database tables can then be merged back
together, when this type of analysis needs to be performed. Zeros  may
also be important for auditing  and DQA reasons, but this typically
varies from place to place. So, it is really up to you to decide what
to do with them. :-)

Best regards,
Jason


On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 8:52 AM, Muhire Andrew <muhireandrew@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Dear Mark,
> Most people takes zero as a data, that is also the way i believe but in
> other side there are people who dont like zero`s to appear in their database
> in that case they dont store it in their data (durin the creation of data
> element ) . But you have to think also on this:  zero is different from
> blank fields(Because if you ignore zero, data quality for completeness of
> the data fields will be more complicated because here you see all filled
> fields and unfilled fields with percentage).So this means when you activate
> " dont store zero", the system will automatically ignore zero`s.
>  Note that : This can also depend on the data management protocols of the
> institution.
> Thanks
> ________________________________
>
> Muhire Andrew
> HMIS/Ministry of Health
> God is my provider.
>
> ________________________________
> From: Mark Spohr <mhspohr@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: dhis2-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2011 2:35 AM
> Subject: [Dhis2-users] DHIS zeros and saving data?
>
> Hi,
> We just started data entry and things are going well and they like the data
> entry.
> I just have a few questions.
>
> Zeros:
> - All of the data items are set to "Don't store zeros".... what does that
> mean?
> When totaling, aggregating, averaging, etc.  will these data fields be
> counted as zeros?
>
> Related.. on data entry I have them skipping over zero fields leaving them
> blank... I assume this will be assumed to be a zero?
>
> Also,  there doesn't seem to be an explicit "SAVE FORM" but the data does
> appear to be saved (even though the User General Settings does NOT have the
> "Auto-save data entry form" box checked).  How does this work?
>
> Thanks for this great software!
> --
> Mark Spohr, MD
>
>
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