SurveyCTO Coding Practices

This article discuss solutions to common issues in the SurveyCTO programming language. For a general introduction to how to structure your approach to CAPI programming or best practices settings, see the Questionnaire Programming topic.

Read First

All coding examples linked to in this section are stored in Google Drive. SurveyCTO also allows you to pull this code directly to your server, using the URL of the Google Sheet (alternatively, you can copy the code to Excel).

Randomization in the field

The best practice is to prepare the randomization before the field activities start, and preload the result of the randomization into the survey. See randomization in SurveyCTO.

Groups

Use a lot of groups but do not over use them. In general, groups are used to fulfill one of the purposes below:

• Apply a relevance condition to multiple fields.
• If you have multiple questions displayed at the same time.
• Frame all the questions on a module in group. Only do this at the highest level of the survey, i.e. do not use this for sub-levels of a module.

Choice Lists

Choice lists are the answer options an enumerator can choose from in a select one or select multiple question. They are listed in the choices tab in the SurveyCTO questionnaire. Open Data Kit, the programming language of SurveyCTO, has very few restrictions on how you can code your options. However, there are choice list best practices that matter for data quality.

It is possible to program dynamically populated choice lists using answers given by the respondents in a previous question.

Categories to add to this page:

• Repeat groups
• Household rosters
  • General examples
  • Updating roasters from previous rounds on tablet during interview
• ID and identification
  • Assigning IDs in the field - both when the sample is know before launch of survey and when respondents are sampled in the field

Additional Resources

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