Considerations for service providers

When you use SurveyCTO for your data collection, you collect better data, your data is more secure, and your turn-around time is faster. As a service provider or survey firm, you may have encountered prospective or current clients who wanted to learn more about the opportunities afforded by digital data collection. To help you make the case for digital data collection, we've created the resources below from the perspective of a service provider. Feel free to adapt these materials when discussing SurveyCTO with your clients.

Running lab-in-the-field experiments in Haiti

Alexis
July 19, 2016
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What are the advantages - and challenges - of running an experiment in the field rather than in a lab? We recently caught up with long-time SurveyCTO user Abbie Turiansky about her research, specifically the lab-in-the-field experiments she has run in Haiti. Abbie is a PhD candidate at UC Davis in the Agricultural and Resource Economics department, focusing on social behavior related to the provision and management of public goods and common-pool resources.

Small data, big impact: Panel and launch party

Alexis
May 24, 2016
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Please join Dobility India for a panel discussion and party in celebration of our India launch. We will be discussing "Small data, big impact: Innovations and best practices in high-quality data collection" with local and global experts as we contribute to building a stronger community of organizations and individuals collecting quality data.

Lessons on data security from MIT

Faizan Diwan
May 3, 2016
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Last week, we joined "Managing confidential research data," a class on research design and methods at MIT taught by Dr. Micah Altman. We thought SurveyCTO users would appreciate the key take-aways.

Survey Design for Quality Data – Part 2

Let’s pick up where we left off in Part 1 of our survey design for quality data series, which was inspired by Dobility founder and CEO Dr. Christopher Robert's presentation in the TechChange course “Technology for Data Collection and Survey Design.” Lesson 1 focused on designing your survey with empathy for field staff and respondents. Lesson 2 highlighted SurveyCTO tools for building in relevance and constraints. With Lesson 3, we’ll jump into a number of ways that SurveyCTO enables you to automate monitoring and workflow.

Survey Design for Quality Data – Part 1

Last week, Dobility founder and CEO Dr. Christopher Robert presented on how to design surveys for quality data in the TechChange Course "Technology for Data Collection and Survey Design.” We thought it would be fun to share highlights from his talk with the larger community of mobile data collection users (while also showing off some of the cool ways that SurveyCTO can help you design smart surveys from day one).

Join us for the DIL mobile data collection webinar series

Alexis
March 7, 2016
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Join SurveyCTO's very own Faizan Diwan for the next installment of the Development Impact Lab (DIL) Mobile Data Collection Webinar Series, presented in partnership with Engineering for Change (E4C).

Online simulation with SurveyCTO

Chris Robert
February 24, 2016
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For a Masters in Public Policy course at Harvard Kennedy School, we wanted to shift a pandemic simulation from in-class to before-class. Read more to learn how we did it with SurveyCTO...

Real-time project monitoring and visualization

Faizan Diwan
June 12, 2015
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SurveyCTO allows you to publish incoming data directly from the server to Google Sheets (formerly known as Google Spreadsheets), so you can create dashboards that present up-to-the-minute summaries of your data. You can then use these dashboards to monitor the progress of your surveys, share real-time results with your team, and more. This post shares a simple example.

Electronic vs. paper-based data collection

Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI or just “electronic”) and Paper and Pencil Interviewing (PAPI or just “paper-based”) are two different methods of conducting surveys and collecting data more generally. PAPI is the traditional method in which an enumerator fills in a paper form or questionnaire. CAPI is the newer method, gaining in popularity, where the enumerator uses a tablet, smartphone, or laptop computer to move through the interview and record responses...

Integrating with SalesForce.com

Chris Robert
March 30, 2015
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The folks at open[Fn] have just released a SalesForce.com integration for SurveyCTO and other ODK-based systems, and we're very excited to have this new option available to our users. (SalesForce.com is a ridiculously powerful cloud platform that can be used for data monitoring, visualization, and management, priced at extremely steep discounts for nonprofits.) ...

Considerations for institutional review boards

Cindy
March 10, 2015
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If you sit on an institutional review board (IRB) or other research ethics committee, you need to know how to assess projects that use electronic forms of data collection. Rest assured that data confidentiality with electronic data collection can actually be substantially safer than paper... if handled properly. This post discusses a series of questions that a research ethics committee should ask of projects employing electronic data collection...

Considerations for students

Cindy
February 24, 2015
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Graduate students have more to think about when it comes to electronic data collection. As students, timelines and budgets are tight, especially for those collecting data abroad. There are three short months in the summer to land in-country and collect data before returning to campus. And there’s likely little room for error with the budget. Luckily, with some planning and preparation, electronic data collection can maximize results within these constraints.

Planning for electronic data collection

Cindy
February 24, 2015
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You need to collect some data. You’re familiar with pen-and-paper data collection, but you’ve decided to make the leap and enjoy the benefits of electronic data collection. Now you have a lot of questions...