Organisations collect more data than ever, from household surveys and baseline studies to facility assessments and customer feedback, yet much of it cannot be trusted. Ambiguous questions, inconsistent interviewing, lost paper forms and late discovery of errors waste budgets and weaken evidence. Mobile tools have made it possible to collect faster and with built-in checks, but only when the survey has been designed properly and the field operation is well managed.

This programme covers the whole data collection chain in a single week. Participants begin by defining information needs and choosing between quantitative, qualitative and mixed approaches. They then practise questionnaire design, response scales, ethics and consent, sampling methods and sample size determination. The central sessions are practical: building forms in KoboToolbox and ODK with validation rules, repeat groups and multilingual labels, loading them onto devices, and managing servers, user permissions and sync. Later sessions cover enumerator recruitment and training, pilot testing, supervision, monitoring dashboards, spot checks and back-checks, plus data cleaning, documentation and protection of respondents' information.

Instruction relies on guided labs and a live field simulation in which participants collect, monitor and clean data. Each person leaves with a tested form, a field manual outline and a data quality plan.

Participants will be able to:

• Translate research questions into a survey design and data collection plan.
• Write clear, unbiased questions and choose suitable response formats.
• Select a sampling approach and calculate a defensible sample size.
• Build mobile forms with skip logic, constraints, calculations and multiple languages.
• Deploy forms to devices and manage submissions, users and servers.
• Train and supervise enumerators and organise fieldwork logistics.
• Apply quality assurance through monitoring, spot checks and back-checks.
• Clean, document and protect data before analysis.

The course is useful to anyone who plans or runs data collection, particularly:

• Monitoring, evaluation and learning officers
• Survey managers and field coordinators
• Research officers and graduate researchers
• Data managers and information management officers
• Field supervisors and lead enumerators
• Statisticians in national statistics offices and county planning units
• Market and social research analysts
• Programme officers in health, education, agriculture and livelihoods projects
• Consultants who conduct baseline and endline studies

Participants complete the week with:

• A tested questionnaire translated into a working mobile form.
• A sampling plan with a sample size worksheet.
• An enumerator training outline and field manual skeleton.
• A monitoring checklist covering spot checks and back-checks.
• A data cleaning log and codebook template.
• A data protection and consent checklist for fieldwork.

Participants learn by building and testing, through:

• Guided labs on KoboToolbox and ODK using participants' own phones or tablets
• A live field simulation with monitoring and back-checks
• Questionnaire clinics where drafts are critiqued by peers
• Worked sampling calculations using spreadsheets
• Short demonstrations of troubleshooting common device problems

Participants earn a CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion from Vision Reach Global Consultancy by attending all sessions and delivering their working form and data quality plan.