data collection
Systematic information gathering
Data collection is the systematic gathering of information for analysis.
The term appears across research, business, and technology contexts: surveys, sensors, and website tracking all involve data collection.
In everyday use, it often carries privacy implications—companies engage in data collection when they track user behavior online.
The app's data collection practices raised concerns.
- questionnairesForms collecting structured responses
- experimentationSystematic testing of ideas
- samplingExtracting subset for study
- crowdsourcingGathering input from masses
- observationAttentive watching or remark
sensors · web scraping · census · measurement · ethnography · databases · informed consent · cookie banners · APIs · telemetry · surveying · anonymization · interviewing · spreadsheets · fieldwork · field notes · environmental monitoring · statistics
- ecology researchfield study, biodiversity, ecosystem, sampling, transect
- fact-findingwitness interviews, evidence gathering, investigative journalism, due diligence, forensic analysis
- Lab Activitiesdissection, titration, chromatography, pipetting, centrifugation
- police reformpolice brutality, police misconduct, body cameras, community oversight, qualified immunity
- Earth observationremote sensing, satellite imagery, weather satellites, thermal imaging, radar imaging
- Nursing Practicepatient assessment, care plans, care plan, implementation, interventions
data collectiondata interpretation
Making sense of information
interpretation · data analysis · analysis · drawing conclusions · data processing
data collectionspeculation
Unproven theorizing or risky investment
conjecture · assumption · guesswork · intuition · supposition