Manuals

Waterwatch Victoria have produced a Data Interpretation Manual to help community members understand and interpret data on the health of their local waterway

This manual is designed to help interpret the basic surrogate measures of river health that Waterwatch monitors collect. It explains important steps to making sense of your data, including:

1. What data do I need to answer my question about the health of my waterway?
2. How good are the measures of river health I collect and what are their limitations?
3. How does my result compare to a 'standard' condition and how much variability can I expect?
4. What does a change in value from sample to sample mean?
5. When should I act on my results?
6. How do my measures relate to waterway health?
7. Who can I talk to for more information?

This manual is also designed to avoid making basic errors of interpretation, in particular, leaping to unwarranted conclusions and mistaking association for causation when interpreting results.

Waterwatchers are becoming more confident about their data. Why? Because we have developed our own protocol on Waterwatch data collection, adopted Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) guidelines and implemented regional data confidence plans.

To find out more about Data Confidence, see our Statewide Data Confidence Framework and our Data Confidence Guidelines.