NEWS & MEDIA

NEWS

Designing Survey Instruments for Electronic Data Collection using Survey CTO (based on Open Data Kit [ODK])

Ms. Farah Said, (Assistant Professor & Research Fellow, Centre for Research in Economics & Business (CREB), Lahore School of Economics gave an overview of the software followed by a sample survey on 18th October and Mr. Saheem and Mr. Salman further elaborated the use of ODK on 19th October, 2017. These workshops were conducted in the Economics Faculty Development Workshop, Winter Term 2017.

Today, electronic data collection finds application in various walks of life - be it in hospitals, industries, or offices. Since the advent of Open Data Kit (ODK) and Survey CTO among other software platforms, electronic data collection has drastically changed the way surveys are administered. The greater familiarity of the general public with cell phones and tablets has aided the use of electronic devices when surveying human subjects. More importantly, surveyors also have a better understanding of the equipment, which makes the training a lot easier to manage. Open Data Kit (ODK) is a free and open-source set of tools which help organizations author, field, and manage mobile data collection solutions. ODK provides an out-of-the-box solution for users to:

Build a data collection form or survey (XLSForm is recommended for larger forms);
Collect the data on a mobile device and send it to a server; and
Aggregate the collected data on a server and extract it in useful formats.