Testing the accuracy of employee-reported data: An inexpensive alternative approach to traditional methods

Abstract

Although Information Technology (IT) solutions improve the collection and validation of operational data, Operations Managers must also rely on self-reported data from workers to make decisions. The problem with this data is that they are subject to intentional manipulation, thus reducing their suitability for decision-making. A method of identifying manipulated data, digital analysis, addresses this problem at low cost. In this paper, we demonstrate how one uses this method in real-world companies to validate self-reported data from line workers. The results of our study suggest that digital analysis estimates the accuracy of employee reported data in operations management, within limited contexts. These findings lead to improved operating performance by providing a tool for practitioners to exclude inaccurate information.

Benford’s law and citations, articles and impact factors of scientific journals

“…The distribution of first significant digits follows a logarithmic distribution favoring the smaller ones according to the following equation: Table 1 The frequency of occurrence of the figure d as the first significant digit in articles (1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007) Somewhat surprisingly, there are several instances of unrelated data sets that follow Benford's law, for example, beta-decay half-lives (Ni et al 2009), strengths of electric dipolar lines in complex atomic spectra (Pain 2008) and the full widths of mesons and baryons (Shao and Ma 2009), as well as other data such magnitude of gradients of images (Jolion 2001). Benford's law has also been used to test data accuracy (Hales et al 2008;Judge and Schechter 2009;Kumar and Bhattacharya 2002). Several explanations of this law have been published (Cohen 1976;Gauvrit and Delahaye 2008).…”

Improving labour relations performance using a Simplified Drum Buffer Rope (S-DBR) technique

“…As with all real-world implementations, a number of issues arise when a process change is made that can confound the effects on the system (Hales, et al 2008). By definition, a field experiment can't be closed-form and isolated.…”

“…Part of the evidence that improvement actually occurred, due to the reasons specified, is that the stimulus comes before the effect, e.g. Hales, et al (2008).…”

Geointelligence against Illegal Deforestation and Timber Laundering in the Brazilian Amazon

“…This statistical model is This dashboard was also combined with the electronic spreadsheet developed by Steven Miller [56] to test the applicability of the statistical model known as Benford's law for evaluating the data of forest inventories and roundwood volumes traded through SisDOF. This statistical model is applicable to specific datasets produced naturally (such as river areas, population, molar weights, atomic numbers, and mortality rates) and has been successfully used for decades to detect economic and financial fraud [57]. It considers the frequency probability of the first valid digit, that is, the leftmost digit, different from zero [56][57][58].…”

“…which means that the probability of the first digit being 1 is something close to 30.1%, whereas digit 9 will appear in only about 4.6% of the observations [51,[56][57][58][59][60]. Figure 9 allows us to understand, graphically, what would be the valid first digit and how the distribution of that digit occurs according to Benford's law.…”