Data Validation Issue with Cascading Select Fields

I’ve discovered a data integrity issue in our household survey dataset where over 1000 records contain blank values in the country field while having populated values in the dependent province and municipality fields. This appears to violate the form’s cascading logic and mandatory field requirements.

Form Configuration

  • Form type: Household survey
  • Field setup:
    • Country field: select_one type
    • Province field: Cascading select (dependent on country selection)
    • Municipality field: Cascading select (dependent on province selection)
    • Both province and municipality are set as mandatory fields

Expected Behavior

Based on the form logic:

  1. User must select a country to activate province field
  2. User must select a province to activate municipality field
  3. Since province and municipality are mandatory, the form should not allow submission without a country selection

Actual Behavior

  • Affected records: Over 1000 records
  • Issue: Records show:
    • Country field: Blank/empty
    • Province field: Contains values
    • Municipality field: Contains values

Impact

This data inconsistency affects our analysis reliability and suggests a potential bypass of the form’s validation logic.

Questions for Investigation

  1. Could this be related to form version changes during data collection?
  2. Are there known issues with cascading select validation in specific KoboToolbox versions?
  3. Could offline data collection have contributed to this validation bypass?
  4. Is there a way to identify when/how these records were created?

Request

Could the development team investigate this validation issue? I’m happy to provide additional details or form specifications if needed.

Has anyone else experienced similar issues with cascading select fields and mandatory field validation?

Thank you for your assistance.

Welcome back to the community, @gstoyle! It sounds like you’re encountering an unexpected issue. To help us pinpoint the problem, could you try deploying this form as a new dummy project? Then, enter some dummy values and see if they disappear there as well. This will help us troubleshoot your issue.

Hi @Kal_Lam - I looked further into this and it turns out it was my error. Sorry for the trouble! Feel free to remove this post.

Thanks you.