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Thanks for the advice. I looked into what happened, and basically I made lots of data-entry errors. It didn't cost us too much, only an extra two days of time.
I talked to some people who hire data entry companies, and I have learned that the standard way to enter data is to have two people enter a list, then compare the two. In our protocol, I was the only person involved in entering any data. According to the data industry's norms, I am expected to make mistakes, but there should be another person involved in checking the data. I've started to do a little bit of research about it, but I think the proofing my boss ended up doing should be part of our protocol, but done by someone else. This is the first year anyone has ever doen this study (and actually, this is my boss' first real position after getting her PhD), so I think this error can be fixed by 1) entering a small amount of data at one time and 2) having someone proof the entered lists to fix mistakes. Not having this as a step in our procedure was a mistake, although luckily it ended up being one in the end.
And whomever said it was right, I do relly need to work on attention to detail. It's just not my thing, which is annoying since everything depends on detail. Ug!
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