Note: This post references an early version of SurveyCTO Collect for Android which is now available from the Google Play Store. Please see our release notes to learn more and download the latest version here.
SurveyCTO has led the digital data collection space in developing data collection capabilities that both reflect and anticipate your needs. As data collection becomes more restricted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re expanding platform functionalities and developing robust resources to help projects adapt, particularly to telephone surveying, also known as computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI).
We’ve developed a CATI starter kit to help transition projects, introduced a new early release version of SurveyCTO Collect for Android with enhanced CATI functionality, and released a software update that broadens platform flexibility in many ways, including the freedom to use field plug-ins to fully control how survey form questions look and operate. In this webinar, we introduce a sample of field plug-ins we’ve created to address pressing needs, particularly transitioning to CATI, as well as those that address many of our most popular feature requests. We also had presenters from the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), global leaders in evidence-based research and policy analysis, who shared plug-ins they’ve created for phone surveying and adapting projects to COVID-19 in SurveyCTO.
Here are some examples of what we discussed:
- Automatically populate the phone dialer application on a device with a phone number stored in a form, ready to be called by the user.
- Automatically generate SMS messages on a device pre-populated with the message and recipient’s phone number, ready to be sent by the user.
- Show an image with clickable regions, and capture which region was selected.
- Specify time limits to answer questions and advance to the next question when the time runs out.
- Track exactly how long a task takes to complete and count the number of times a certain event occurs inside a time limit. This support allows for timed assessments and experiments, such as the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA).
Other resources:
- Presentation slide deck
- SurveyCTO guide to field plug-ins
- SurveyCTO field plug-in catalog
- The YouTube field plug-in discussed by IPA (also called scto-youtube)
- The Exotel field plug-in discussed by JPAL
If you want to learn more about SurveyCTO’s CATI starter kit, please watch this webinar recording. If you need help now, our support team is available 24×7. Go to the Support Center and click on the link to “Submit a support request.” No question is too small.
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