Data Capture Tool

Traditionally, telephone surveyors manually entered data into spreadsheets, which can result in errors or inconsistencies in data collection and entry. These problems arise in part because of hard-to-follow survey skip patterns or complicated logic flow. Manual data entry also can lead to incorrect or incomplete information..Our Data Capture Tool (DCT) mitigates these problems. DCT is a Web-based application, designed to facilitate data collection, organization, and analysis.

DCT makes it possible to collect reliable, accurate data for comprehensive and applicable analysis. With DCT, non-programmers can generate HTML forms dynamically, as they create survey instruments, which can be easily distributed as MS Word documents for review.

Once a survey is created, responses are input via a user-friendly Web interface. As surveys are completed, data are stored in a database with a common structure, facilitating the automation of simple analysis, such as frequencies. Survey progress, including categorization of completes and preliminary frequencies, are available on-demand via an administrative Web interface and, if necessary, they can be accessed by clients and other outside parties. Survey responses, instruments, and frequencies are also available online and can easily be exported to MS Excel, MS Word, or PDF formats.

The advantages of DCT include:

• Clean data
• Consistent output
• Automation of simple analyses and coding
• Flexible output formats
• Programmatically driven logic patterns

Ultimately, DCT makes data collection and analysis more efficient and accurate, while lowering costs, which in turn, leads to increased client satisfaction.