AN EMPIRICAL APPLICATION OF DATA MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES IN ENVIRONMENTAL, EARTH AND SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCHES.

Ifabiyi, I.P.

Data is required in all facets of research endeavour and for it to be used and become useful; it must be scientifically collected, analyzed and interpreted. All these efforts involved highly technical procedures. This paper (i) discusses some methods of data management and (ii) exemplifies efforts involved in data management using primary sets of data. The example in this paper demonstrates procedures for handling large volume of data sets typical of social, environmental and earth science researches. In the empirical data applied to explain data management procedures, 58 variables were generated from a structured questionnaire used in soliciting information on rural water supply and climate change adaptation in Goronyo, Sokoto, state. The large size of variables of variables for the explanations of the relationships was reduced via the principal components analysis (PCA). The result of PCA was further processed with the multiple regression and multiple stepwise regression analyses; two methods that established relationships between quantity of water demanded and variables of climate change adaptation. The PCA and multiple regression analysis identified some explanatory variables that account for about 88% of variation in climate change adaptation and isolated indices of waiting time, water sourcing, water conservation, household size and occupation as useful in water resources management under climate change. The paper concluded that data is necessary in all facets of human lives; therefore, it must be collected using scientific procedures and must be properly interpreted using appropriate techniques. It is hoped that this paper will be relevant to a broad spectrum of researches especially in the social, environmental and earth sciences.

Key words: Data management, environmental and social sciences, climate change, water adaptation.