With the launch of our drag-and-drop form designer and the free Community edition of SurveyCTO earlier this year, SurveyCTO has become even more accessible for small-scale NGOs, students, and researchers, not to mention users who are just getting started with survey design. We hear wonderful feedback from our users daily, and we thought we'd take this opportunity to share a few recent testimonials.
Oxfam, a long-time SurveyCTO user, recently released their "Mobile Survey Toolkit," which identifies SurveyCTO as one of its "most valuable tools" for mobile data collection.
The Kenya Patient Safety Impact Evaluation (KePSIE) is a unique partnership between the Kenyan Government and the World Bank Group (WBG). It is the largest trial to date aimed at improving patient safety in low- and middle-income countries. We wanted to learn more about KePSIE and how SurveyCTO is playing a role in the research, so we reached out to Guadalupe Bedoya, an economist in the Development Impact Evaluation team at the World Bank's Research Group and the Team Leader and co-principal investigator of the impact evaluation.
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.
We're kicking off a new series for the SurveyCTO blog - photos from our users around the world. This round, we're featuring submissions from the Philippines, Mozambique, Uganda, and more.
During the past few years, Chile has seen a marked increase in the number of immigrants entering the country, many of whom are seeking better economic conditions. Public policy has not kept pace with the complex realities on the ground; as such, the J-PAL Latin America and the Caribbean (J-PAL LAC) sees a critical role for the generation of evidence than can inform policy and programming. We connected with J-PAL LAC's Constanza Palacios to learn more about one of their current projects, "Integration of migrants in Chile: the impact of networking."
Sumeet Patil is the Research Director at NEERMAN, an impact evaluation and policy research organization based in Mumbai that works in water and sanitation, environmental health, agriculture, energy, and disaster management. Sumeet oversees research study design, quality control, data analysis, and publishing, and he leads strategic business development for the organization. We asked Sumeet to tell us about a few recent projects, how he uses SurveyCTO, and why he recommends transitioning away from paper-based surveys.
How do you encourage girls to enroll in school and engage them sufficiently so they continue their education? We asked Woubedle Alemayehu, the senior program manager in the impact evaluation unit at Social Impact, to tell us more about the evaluation for the Discovery Learning Alliance Discovery Girls Education Project she's leading in Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria.
Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), a research and policy non-profit, has been studying how market interventions can improve access to sanitation around the world. To learn more about the latest developments in West Africa and how IPA is using SurveyCTO in the field, we connected with Shoshana Griffith, who manages multiple IPA urban sanitation projects in the region.
How do you develop a successful financial coaching program? Jonathan Rollins, a Senior Research Associate with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), is working with IPA partners to design, build, implement, and test a financial coaching program in Peru that consolidates sector- and context-specific knowledge with academic research and industry best practices. We asked Jonathan to describe his work and how his project is using SurveyCTO as a client management tool.
How do you improve access to family planning resources and reduce rates of HIV infection in Sub-Saharan Africa? In Zambia, Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) researchers are studying the mass distribution and marketing campaign for the new Maximum Diva Woman’s Condom to help answer these questions. We connected with Jessie Pinchoff, one of the principal investigators (PI's) on the project, to learn more about Maximum Diva (Ed. Note: best product name ever), how IPA is structuring their research, and how SurveyCTO is being used to support IPA's work.
The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), a long-time SurveyCTO user, works with governments and NGOs to identify and tackle many of the largest barriers to effective treatment and care for diarrhea, AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases. We reached out to Shreya Agrawal, Program Manager for Country Support in the Essential Medicines Program, to learn more about her work and how her team is using SurveyCTO in the field.
One of the research projects we're watching closely is the Global Early Adolescent Study (GEAS) based out of the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. We asked GEAS Senior Research Program Coordinator Lydia Animosa, MSPH, about what they've learned so far about early adolescence from their 15 study sites around the world and if they have any lessons for researchers embarking on complex, multi-year studies.
In the past few months, we've been developing our online simulation toolkit so that faculty can digitize their public policy simulations. We checked in with Joshua Yardley about his experience using SurveyCTO to run a pandemic simulation in the "Program Evaluation and Policy Analysis" course he teaches at Brown University and the opportunities he sees for using online simulations in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
SurveyCTO has been the data collection tool of choice for J-PAL South Asia for several years now, enabling researchers to collect and analyze quality data on dozens of India-based impact evaluations. Hundreds of other J-PAL and IPA projects have likewise used SurveyCTO in developing countries around the world.
In recognition of International Women's Day, we thought we'd share two of the many ways that SurveyCTO partners have been using mobile data collection to improve the lives of women and girls around the world...
There is a critical difference between data and quality data. In this new era of #2030NOW, we must push for more than numbers that fill spreadsheets; we must push for good, quality data that reflects the needs of all members of society—young and old. We need data that covers conflict-ridden areas, refugee camps, and remote, disconnected areas. Read how inclusive, high-quality data will be key to achieving the new Global Goals...
As SurveyCTO has grown, so has the range of projects for which the platform is being used to collect high-quality data, evaluate programs, and conduct research. Who is using SurveyCTO? And how have they leveraged the platform to get more accurate, real-time data? Below are a few case studies from our users...