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Electronic Data Collection: The SurveyCTO Option

November 19, 2014

Christopher Robert, Dobility, Inc. (SurveyCTO)

• Helps you to capture, transport, and process data collected using Android phones and tablets (i.e., a CAPI product) – For field settings with no (or limited) connectivity

– Widely used for impact evaluations, academic survey research, project M&E, mHealth applications, and market research

• Goal is to empower research and M&E teams – to design, deploy, and manage their own surveys – even long, complex

ones

– to collect high-quality data

– and to do it affordably

What is SurveyCTO?

• Dobility is a lean, welfare- and efficiency-obsessed software company with a social mission

• SurveyCTO built for scale, a bit on the “Ikea” model: CAPI as commodity

• We leverage open-source technologies because we don’t like reinventing the wheel

Efficiency and affordability

• Are great… – avoid reinvention of wheel – flexibility and interoperability – seemingly can’t beat the cost (nominally free)

• Are not so great… – lack of adequate support – often designed by techies for techies – often require server admins, programmers, other technical

consultants • can turn out to be extremely costly in practice!

• Our solution: Open Data Kit (ODK) – plus hosting, plus hundreds of improvements, plus help and support

Open source technologies

• Ethical and/or IRB requirement: don’t have sensitive respondent data vulnerable on public servers

– Don’t even want a wide circle of “authorized” users to have access to data

• Our solution: make ODK’s support for public/private key pairs easy to use, build workflow and design product around it

Example: data security

• Survey design in Excel or Google spreadsheets – There are trade-offs here…

Survey design paradigm

• Our solution: online and offline tools to systematically make common tasks easier

Ease of use

• Our solution: online and offline tools to systematically make common tasks easier

Ease of use

• Our solution: online and offline tools to systematically make common tasks easier

Ease of use

• Our solution: online and offline tools to systematically make common tasks easier

Ease of use

• Our solution: online and offline tools to systematically make common tasks easier

Ease of use

• Our solution: online and offline tools to systematically make common tasks easier

Ease of use

• Our solution: online and offline tools to systematically make common tasks easier

Ease of use

• Also want to make management of data and workflows easy…

Datasets

• Also want to make management of data and workflows easy…

Datasets

• Also want to make management of data and workflows easy…

Datasets

• Also want to steadily lower the cost of collecting high-quality data (as opposed to garbage) – Random audio audits

Collecting quality data

• Also want to steadily lower the cost of collecting high-quality data (as opposed to garbage) – Random audio audits

– Speed limits • Quietly track violations

• Trigger audio audits on x violations

Collecting quality data

• Also want to steadily lower the cost of collecting high-quality data (as opposed to garbage) – Random audio audits

– Speed limits • Quietly track violations

• Trigger audio audits on x violations

– Automated quality checks

Collecting quality data

• Also want to steadily lower the cost of collecting high-quality data (as opposed to garbage) – Random audio audits

– Speed limits • Quietly track violations

• Trigger audio audits on x violations

– Automated quality checks

Collecting quality data

• Also want to steadily lower the cost of collecting high-quality data (as opposed to garbage) – Random audio audits

– Speed limits • Quietly track violations

• Trigger audio audits on x violations

– Automated quality checks

Collecting quality data

• Also want to steadily lower the cost of collecting high-quality data (as opposed to garbage) – Random audio audits

– Speed limits • Quietly track violations

• Trigger audio audits on x violations

– Automated quality checks

Collecting quality data

• Happy to field questions – and to get more into nuts and bolts in our lab session

Thank you!

SurveyCTO lab session