DATE:    May 23, 2001

TO:  Sarah Martin, Project Coordinator, Lents Town Center Urban Renewal Project

FROM:  Allison Pang,  Canvass Coordinator, Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Program

SUBJECT:  Explanation of the development of the database

 Southeast Uplift coordinated the Lents Business Canvass for the Portland Development Commission. A total of 340 business were contacted and their current addresses and phone numbers were recorded by the canvassers. 180 businesses chose to participate by completing a survey. The business contact information and survey responses were used to develop an Excel database.

 Originally, two Excel databases were requested. One database was to consist only of contact information and the other only of survey responses. During the data entry phase of the canvass it was decided by PDC that one database containing both contact information and survey responses would be the most useful.

 The database has 340 rows, one record for each of the businesses currently in existence. The 38 columns of the database were created to contain both contact information and responses to the survey questions.

 Contact information consists of the following fields: name of the business, complete address including city, state, and zip code and telephone number. The case style is all caps because one of the functions of this database is to print mailing labels.

 The survey response information was broken down with the direction of PDC to come up with the most efficient format for data analysis. In order to preserve consistency and accuracy responses in years and months were translated into months only.

In addition, the questions with multiple answer choices were broken down so that there was a column for each possible response. For some of these multiple answer questions a "1" or a "0" was entered into each column. A "1" meant the business selected a particular answer choice, while zero meant it was not selected. This method of coding will make quantitative interpretation into percentages possible.

 In closing, to ensure we created a high quality product the Canvass Field Manager supervised and assisted canvassers during the data entry phase. The final version of the database has been edited for consistency and accuracy by the Canvass Coordinator.