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).
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...
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).
SurveyCTO's new drag-and-drop form builder is here (almost!). Learn more here...
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...
SurveyCTO 2.0 is out! Read more about what this means, and what we're coming out with next...
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...
Because SurveyCTO 2.0 is such a big release for us, we're being very careful about the testing and roll-out. As we finalize the release, we'd like to invite our existing users to participate as beta testers. Read this post for all the details.
See a preview of our upcoming 2.0 release here, including our new support for web-based data collection. It's a whole new SurveyCTO...
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...
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.
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...
People have been talking about human-centered design for years, and there is always much enthusiasm for how the core principles might apply in the development context. In this blog post, I try to bring things down to earth, discussing ways that project and in-country teams might use SurveyCTO to put good design principles into practice.
Thoughts on the structure of the technology-for-development marketplace, donor incentives, and the role for private-sector technology providers...
The theme of our v1.40 release is freedom, because our development focus was on the removal of limitations. There's nothing too flashy or sexy about it – we're leaving that for our 2.0 release (which is already in development) – but we expect that the greater freedoms in v1.40 will lead to significant, potentially-dramatic quality-of-life improvements for many of our users...
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.) ...
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...
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.
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...
In addition to vastly-improved offline support via local wi-fi networks, we added a REST API for programmatic access to server data and made some smaller improvements for Excel users.
It started as a modest experiment in electronic data collection embedded within a much more ambitious experiment involving microfinance in rural India. Today, SurveyCTO has grown into a mature technology platform used to collect data in hundreds of projects around the world. This inaugural blog post seems like a good time to look briefly back, and then forward to where SurveyCTO is headed...