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Simplifying and improving mobile based data collection

Published: 07 December 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Social programs often require collection of demographic and program related information. Pen-paper surveys have been the most favorable way of collecting such information. However, with proliferation of smartphones, low cost mobile connectivity with good coverage and availability of several data collection applications that can even work around the connectivity concerns, pen-paper surveys are now being replaced by mobile based data collection. In this work, we discuss the enhancement of Open Data Kit (ODK), an existing mobile based data collection application, with features such as pre-filling and validation SMS. The additional features were motivated from the real world requirements of reducing the data collection effort and minimizing the discrepancies in records for a project requiring information dissemination to beneficiaries of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), a government of India scheme. Data collection exercise, using our extended tool, is currently ongoing in two districts across two different states in India. Preliminary results from one deployment indicate that even with 8% of pre-filled fields in a form, there was a 16.1% decrease in the errors. Additionally, time per survey reduced with the pre-filling option. Preliminary results from another deployment indicate that 35% of the pre-filled forms had mismatched or changed information when compared with the data available in government records.

References

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G. Demombynes, P. Gubbins, and A. Romeo. Challenges and opportunities of mobile phone-based data collection: evidence from south sudan. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, (6321), 2013.
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B. DeRenzi, Y. Anokwa, T. Parikh, and G. Borriello. Reliable data collection in highly disconnected environments using mobile phones. In SIGCOMM 2007.
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C. Hartung, A. Lerer, Y. Anokwa, C. Tseng, W. Brunette, and G. Borriello. Open data kit: Tools to build information services for developing regions. In ICTD, 2010.
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S. Patnaik, E. Brunskill, and W. Thies. Evaluating the accuracy of data collection on mobile phones: A study of forms, sms, and voice. In ICTD, 2009.
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M. Tomlinson, W. Solomon, Y. Singh, T. Doherty, M. Chopra, P. Ijumba, A. C. Tsai, and D. Jackson. The use of mobile phones as a data collection tool: a report from a household survey in south africa. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 9(1): 51, 2009.
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S. Zhang, Q. Wu, M. H. van Velthoven, L. Chen, J. Car, I. Rudan, Y. Zhang, Y. Li, and R. W. Scherpbier. Smartphone versus pen-and-paper data collection of infant feeding practices in rural china. Journal of medical Internet research, 14(5), 2012

Cited By

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  • (2020)Mobile + CloudCognitive Analytics10.4018/978-1-7998-2460-2.ch041(784-804)Online publication date: 2020
  • (2019)An In-depth Analysis of the Impact of Battery Usage Patterns on Performance of Task Allocation Algorithms in Sparse Mobile CrowdsensingProceedings of the 22nd International ACM Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems10.1145/3345768.3355930(297-306)Online publication date: 25-Nov-2019
  • (2017)Mobile + CloudMobile Application Development, Usability, and Security10.4018/978-1-5225-0945-5.ch012(260-279)Online publication date: 2017
  • Show More Cited By

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Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
ICTD '13: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies and Development: Notes - Volume 2
December 2013
214 pages
ISBN:9781450319072
DOI:10.1145/2517899
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

Sponsors

  • IPID: International Network for Postgraduate Students in the area of ICT4D
  • University of the Western Cape: University of the Western Cape
  • Nokia
  • Google Inc.
  • Microsoft: Microsoft
  • University of Cape Town
  • Microsoft Reasearch: Microsoft Reasearch
  • IDRC: International Development Research Centre
  • IBM: IBM

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 December 2013

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Author Tags

  1. data collection
  2. open data kit
  3. survey

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  • Research-article

Conference

ICTD 2013
Sponsor:
  • IPID
  • University of the Western Cape
  • Microsoft
  • Microsoft Reasearch
  • IDRC
  • IBM

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Overall Acceptance Rate 22 of 116 submissions, 19%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2020)Mobile + CloudCognitive Analytics10.4018/978-1-7998-2460-2.ch041(784-804)Online publication date: 2020
  • (2019)An In-depth Analysis of the Impact of Battery Usage Patterns on Performance of Task Allocation Algorithms in Sparse Mobile CrowdsensingProceedings of the 22nd International ACM Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems10.1145/3345768.3355930(297-306)Online publication date: 25-Nov-2019
  • (2017)Mobile + CloudMobile Application Development, Usability, and Security10.4018/978-1-5225-0945-5.ch012(260-279)Online publication date: 2017
  • (2016)Mobile Device Administration for Secure and Manageable Health Data Collection in Under-Resourced AreasProceedings of the 7th Annual Symposium on Computing for Development10.1145/3001913.3001927(1-10)Online publication date: 18-Nov-2016
  • (2016)Computer Security for Data Collection TechnologiesProceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development10.1145/2909609.2909660(1-11)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2016
  • (2016)The Premise of Local InformationProceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development10.1145/2909609.2909646(1-5)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2016
  • (2015)DUCESProceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computing for Development10.1145/2830629.2830653(23-30)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2015
  • (2015)Maareech: Usability Testing Tool for Voice Response System Using XML Based User ModelsDesign, User Experience, and Usability: Design Discourse10.1007/978-3-319-20886-2_10(101-112)Online publication date: 21-Jul-2015
  • (2014)Utilizing social media to improve local government responsivenessProceedings of the 15th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research10.1145/2612733.2612773(236-244)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2014

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