Programme decisions, donor reports and policy debates all depend on data that someone had to collect, often in difficult conditions. Mobile devices have made collection faster and cheaper, but they have not removed the old problems of unclear questions, biased samples and weak supervision. In some respects they add new ones, such as device management, connectivity and data security.

The Leadership and Performance in Data Collection, Survey Design & Mobile Tools Training Course joins technical method with team leadership. Participants start with research questions and indicators, move to questionnaire design and translation, sampling and power, and then to digital form building, testing and deployment. Management topics include recruiting and training enumerators, planning logistics, supervising in the field, motivating teams, handling ethical dilemmas and tracking performance with daily quality checks.

Most of the week is hands-on. Each participant builds a working mobile survey, collects practice data in the room, cleans a dataset with errors planted for them to find, and prepares a field operations plan. The result is a set of tools and habits ready to apply on the next assignment.

At the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Translate research questions and indicators into a survey design.
• Write unbiased questions and structure a questionnaire for easy analysis.
• Calculate sample sizes and apply stratified, cluster or random sampling.
• Build and test mobile forms in XLSForm with validation and skip logic.
• Deploy surveys to devices and manage submissions in KoboToolbox or ODK.
• Recruit, train and supervise enumerators and field teams.
• Apply informed consent, confidentiality and data protection practices in the field.
• Monitor data quality in real time and clean and document the final dataset.

The course is aimed at those who commission, design or lead data collection, including:

• Monitoring and evaluation officers and managers
• Research officers and survey coordinators
• Field supervisors and team leaders
• Programme managers and project officers
• Statisticians and data analysts in public agencies
• Information management officers in NGOs
• Academic researchers and graduate students
• Consultants conducting baseline and evaluation surveys

Participants complete the course with:

• A tested questionnaire for their own study, with a codebook.
• A working mobile form built to the XLSForm standard.
• A sampling plan with calculated sample size and selection steps.
• An enumerator training agenda and field supervision checklist.
• A set of data quality checks and a cleaning log template.
• A field operations plan covering schedule, budget and risk.

Technical skills and team management are taught side by side through practice. Participants experience:

• Short methods briefings followed immediately by labs
• Building and testing forms on participants' own phones or tablets
• A practice data collection in the training room with live monitoring
• A cleaning exercise on a dataset with deliberate errors
• Role play of enumerator briefings and field problem solving

Participants who attend all sessions and complete the labs receive a CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion issued by Vision Reach Global Consultancy.