Structure and navigation for KoBoCollect (HH Roster, Individual questionnaires, etc.)

Dear KoBo experts,

Planning a detailed survey in refugee camps, we need your advice for the following requirements. We would highly appreciate if we can get a clearer picture with your help and a really advanced XLSForms example and recommendations how to realise at least part of these features.

  1. Enumerator does household roster with basic variables, like sex, age, relationship, marital status.

  2. It would be great, if the roster can separately be “validated”., saved (and even uploaded for back-up safety).
    So far, we only see the (confusing) enum option to go “to the end” to validate. and then back … , not comfortable via the top menu.

  3. The enum can pause here or continue. The enum can choose how to continue, esp. depending on presence of respondents… He can e.g. continue with the head/main person for housing questions or with a female for food security questions (both on HH level).

  4. The enum can then choose with which person to start/do the individual questions part. Great would be, to select from a dynamically created list of HH members. And then “open” this person block.

  5. The enum will do the individual questions with this person (partly or full).

  6. Great, if after (even between) the enum could “validate” for this person.

  7. The enum will choose the next person (available) for interview (individual questions), until all from the roster are covered.

    At the whole end, final validation, save and transmission will be done.

So, more general requirements are:

  • Something similar to a questionnaire parts navigation menu (Roster, HH questionnaire, Individual questionnaires per person …)
  • Dynamic selection of person to be interviewed
  • IDs (permantly) linking persons to a household, esp. for export
  • IDs for persons linking same person over different repeats (esp. HH Roster & Individua questions)
  • Same Unique HH-ID over multiple submissions, Using once(uuid()) as HH-ID may satisfy this.
  • Cascading delete of a person (in roster with automatic deletion in related links) should be able, without mixing-up exisitng references indexes).
  • Also adding a person. in the roster, after having startet with individual questions, should be able without mismapping existing links (indexes).

We could realise those things in other CAPI projects (e.g. with CSPro). We already passed several days scannning through documentation, support and community forum of KoBo and ODK, without getting condensed info what and how those requirements are feasible with KoBo (XLSForms). Concerning IDs we read already the posting on community posting (search unique id), esp. Unique ID field.

Sorry, for lengthy msg.
Thank in advance - and to the whole KoBo team in general…
Kind regards

Hi
When you need to do a complete household roster with all the functionalities mentioned above, this could be one of the work arounds.

  • If you intend to create a household roster with with a lot of dependency constraints, then the repeat groups may not be the best option

  • You may have to create a first question that determines the number of household members and ensure that the subsequent questions appear only if the household member threshold meets what you expect.

  • You need to create a number of questions for each variable e.g. age1 age2 age3 age4 etc and make it relevant for the preceding one

  • You then need to be able to reference your questions as needed.

See the example in this link HouseholdListingRandomSelection.xls (36 KB)

Regards
Stephane