Data plays a vital role in any membership organisation, the ability to effectively communicate and engage with your members relies in large part on the quality of your data. For NHS Foundation Trusts data quality becomes even more important to be able to fulfil the reporting requirements of Monitor. Without accurate demographic information (age, gender, ethnicity) Trusts can’t provide the data that Monitor require every year.
At MES we currently hold over 1,250,000 individual records for our clients and that figure is continually growing. Because we recognise the importance of data quality we regularly cleanse it making sure to remove any duplicates, ensure the accuracy of postal addresses and remove any deceased members. Not only does this make reporting much easier, but it also makes mailings much more cost effective as you don’t include members who no longer live at the address you hold.
Through this data cleansing process we've come to understand a few quirks that come with any set of individual records. The most interesting of which is the surprisingly high number of people who marry someone with a similar name or the same first initial. The number of Pauls married to Paula’s, or Sarah’s married to Steve’s is always a surprise. At first we just thought it was one of those odd facts of life that didn't really have an explanation.
But last week we found out that the trend we were seeing actually has a psychological reasoning. A number of studies have identified something called the name-letter effect, where individuals are said to prefer letters that appear in their own name and numbers that appear in their date of birth. You can even test this yourself – I asked five of the MES team what their favourite number was and three all gave numbers that feature in their Date of Birth. This name-letter effect is reinforced by a second idea called implicit egotism where people are attracted to people, places and situations that reflect on themselves and this is often cited as the reason that people are attracted to others with similar names.
So next time you’re going through your membership list have a quick look and see how many of your members have got similar names, you might be pleasantly surprised.