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Field survey operations with quality control at the point of entry
Moved collection from paper to validated digital forms, so errors surface while the enumerator is still on site.
- Year
- 2024
- Sector
- Multi-region survey
- Our role
- Instrument design, system setup, field monitoring
Problem
- Entry errors were found weeks after collection, once respondents could no longer be reached.
- Field progress was invisible until paper questionnaires arrived and were keyed in.
Approach
- Translated the instrument into digital forms with range validation, cross-question consistency checks, and skip logic.
- Set up offline mode so areas without connectivity stayed in scope.
- Built daily progress monitoring by region and by enumerator.
Outcome
- Most entry errors are caught in the field rather than during cleaning.
- The gap between collection and analysis-ready data dropped sharply, since there is no re-keying step.
Stack
- ODK
- PostgreSQL
- Docker
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