Using tablet for household survey is a challenge for some
of our country teams, especially for the Lao team where using table for
household survey is a new technique. Dr. Saithong Phommavong is the main person
who has a vision for capacity building for both National University of Laos and
FATE project in the future. He fully encouraged creating xlsform for electronic
survey by using tablet. At the beginning, Dr. Saithong Phommavong and I had
meeting and discussed about survey with Dr. Micheal Epprecht and Mr. Souphaphone
Phathitmyxay since they already had done many surveys by using tablets (ODK
app). Souphaphone is a database &
GIS specialist of CDE. He gave a brief overview of using tablets for household
surveys. I found that it is not easy to do so. This task really needs a person
in charge to create and edit form through questionnaire all the time. The xlsform needs to be tested many times
until it can work properly.
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The enumerators at Vienkeo Village during tablets testing
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The big support came from CDE office especially Dr. Michael
Epprecht who allowed Mr. Souphaphone Phathitmyxay to help me. Whenever I had
questions regarding xlsform, he was pleased to help. It was a very good start
for Lao team that Maurice already created the basis of the xlsform for FATE-project.
At first, I had to explore how to create an xlsform. I learned from internet by
myself via YouTube and asked Google what I did not know. I also followed the links
on how to create xlsform that Mr. Maurice Tschopp who is PhD candidate of FATE
project shared and links of survey CTO information and FAQ (http://www.surveycto.com/about.html, coding: General information on survey on xls forms: Instructions, software and training manuals
for xls forms: https://opendatakit.org/use/xlsform/ , and Examples of xls
forms/ODK programing: https://opendatakit.org/help/form-design/examples/). This was a great opportunity for me to learn a very
new project. I spent a lot of time learning by doing the coding of xlsform for
survey CTO. I worked on it about three weeks (testing and editing xlsform). I
stayed up late almost every day during these time. Eventually, I was able to created
xlsform for Survey CTO. I feel very happy of this success even if it was not
fully perfect.
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Enumerator under training in using tablet
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After the creation of the xlsform, the next step was
training for enumerators. The enumerators were lecturers and MA students from
the faculty of Social Sciences, National University of Laos. They followed three
trainings. Before the first training, I distributed questionnaire to them to
read and tablets to try on. For the first
training, the enumerators were given an overview of software by Mr. Souphaphone
Phathitmyxay. Then, they practiced using
tablet in the fieldwork at Viengkeo village nearby the National University of
Laos. In order to check the questionnaire on the tablets, enumerators were divided
in pairs, one enumerator used tablet and another one used the questionnaire printed.
They highlighted the errors. After complete testing tablet, they gave feedback
on the questionnaire printed. The xlsform was updated again regarding the
errors after this practice. Lastly, they were trained to confirm with using
tablet as well as familiar with questionnaire on tablet.
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Group Discussion after testing tablet
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