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).

Labelling

To speed up data import, all SurveyCTO surveys should have a language labelling column in both the questionnaire and the value labeling tab called "label:stata" which will be used to download and process the data. These labels should be in English, be no longer than 32 characters, and uses no special characters. The research assistant who will be responsible for data management can be of great assistance in preparing this. See the SurveyCTO documentation on "Translating a form into multiple languages" for more details.

Randomization

In the field, the best practice when randomizing anything is to prepare the randomization before the field activities start, and preload the result of the randomization into the survey so that it is replicable. What follows are some examples of SurveyCTO forms that randomly select survey participants:

• Random draw of beneficiaries from a large pool, without knowing if the potential beneficiaries are valid participants - this form randomly prioritizes participation over a group of IDs, which are then verified by the enumerator until a final group of 8 participants are registered.

• Random draw of any number of beneficiaries using repeat group - here we randomly prioritize a group of IDs using an elegant and concise repeat group solution, however this is not recommended for use in the field as it's not replicable without adaptation.

Repeat Groups / Rosters

This sections lists code examples for special requirements in relation to rosters and repeat groups. These can be used to develop interesting functionality within forms, particularly interacting with the responses from a household, plot or crop roster. Here are some examples of this:

• Setting Up Repeat Group Using Previous Choices - there are many cases when you want to repeat a set of questions over previously selected responses, such as a set of crops cultivated or activities performed. This example shows the 2 main ways of coding this.

• Select Member in Roster Based on Criteria - in this example we have a roster over children and then we want the respondent to be asked to select the youngest child if the mother is present, if she is not present, we ask the respondent to select the second youngest child if the mother of the child is present, and so fourth.

• Filtering on Conditions of Repeat Group Questions - this example utilizes responses found inside a repeat group roster as conditions upon which to filter choices for questions further down in a form.

• Filtering in Repeated Choice Questions - this example shows how to code a repeating question where the list of choices is reduced if an option was previously selected

Agriculture Survey Advice

There are many challenges encountered when coding agriculture sections of household surveys. There is a lot of data to capture at different and changing levels: per season, per plot, per crop, etc., and sometimes you might want to change the level of questions from crop within plot within season, to, for example, just the crop level. It's important that the respondents are able to recall harvest and sales information as accurately as possible, therefore we must structure surveys well to account for this. Here are some example forms that talk through the main issues and suggest designs to overcome these issues.

• Dealing with 'Other' Crops Over Different Repeat Group Levels - in SurveyCTO it's very difficult to introduce new crops in different repeats and be able to recall them at other points in the survey. This example form talks about these difficulties and suggests a structure to refer back to them in other sections.

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.

• Display multiple questions on the same screen.

• 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.

• Dynamically Populated Choice Lists - basic - it is possible to program dynamically populated choice lists using answers given by the respondents in a previous question.

• Dynamically Populated Choice Lists - from repeated select_one - a specific example of dynamically populated choice list is when you populate a select_multiple question with answers from a select_one asked in a repeat group. For example, say that you list crops grown in a repeat group where each repeat is a crop, and later you want to be able to ask "which crop did you grow the most?" and only the crops already selected in the repeat group should display.

Calculations

• SurveyCTO has developed a great best practices guide for using calculations. Calculations help with the design of smarter surveys. For example, you can use calculations to find out how long it takes respondents to reach a certain point in your survey, you can monitor your respondents’ observance of suggested response times for skill assessments or you can use calculations to ensure that personally identifiable information (PII) doesn’t get captured in your data analysis. This guide provide 9 tips and examples for using calculations and can be found here: https://www.surveycto.com/blog/using-calculations/

Other Tips and Tricks

• Question font formatting in HTML - SurveyCTO accepts HTML commands in the text of questions. This can be used to highlight and emphasize key information, among other uses.

Categories to add to this page:

• 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

Tips on coding complex agricultural surveys in SurveyCTO, from IFPRI: https://www.surveycto.com/best-practices/pro-tips-for-agricultural-surveys-from-ifpri/