Issue with Inconsistent Timestamps in CSPro Project

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shafim0123
Posts: 16
Joined: January 29th, 2025, 12:42 am

Issue with Inconsistent Timestamps in CSPro Project

Post by shafim0123 »

Dear CSPro Family,

I have implemented a timestamp system in my CSPro project to calculate the time duration of interviews. However, I’ve noticed that sometimes the timestamp values appear to be inconsistent or inaccurate.

Could you please guide me on how to ensure accurate and consistent timestamp recording in CSPro? I would also appreciate any best practices or checks I can implement to correct or prevent such issues.

Thank you in advance for your support.
Gregory Martin
Posts: 1948
Joined: December 5th, 2011, 11:27 pm
Location: Washington, DC

Re: Issue with Inconsistent Timestamps in CSPro Project

Post by Gregory Martin »

Can you provide more details? What are you seeing?

The timestamp function uses the system clock, so if enumerators have permission to change the clock, it could result in a situation where the timestamps end up inconsistent.

If you are collecting paradata, you will get detailed information about when many events occurred during the data collection. These are stored sequentially in event order, so by looking at the timestamps of each event, you could determine if the user modified the system time. You can query paradata from within CSPro:

https://www.csprousers.org/help/CSPro/C ... adata.html
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