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.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies and Development, ICTD 2013 |
Pages | 45-48 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Volume | 2 NOTES |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 1 2013 |
Externally published | Yes |
Event | 6th International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies and Development, ICTD 2013 - Cape Town, South Africa Duration: Dec 7 2013 → Dec 10 2013 |
Other
Other | 6th International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies and Development, ICTD 2013 |
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Country | South Africa |
City | Cape Town |
Period | 12/7/13 → 12/10/13 |
Keywords
- Data collection
- Open data kit
- Survey
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Software
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
- Computer Networks and Communications