A survey that asks a non farmer how many acres of maize they planted wastes time and annoys people. A survey that accepts a household size of 250 produces nonsense reports. Smart surveys avoid both, and adverts for data collection roles ask for exactly this kind of quality checking. This lesson is optional, but it is the step that turns a form filler into someone who can design surveys.
Three tools for smarter surveys
- Skip logic (also called relevance or branching) shows a question only when an earlier answer makes it relevant.
- Constraints reject answers that break a rule, with a message explaining why.
- Required questions cannot be left blank.
Visual form builders such as KoboToolbox's offer these through menus. Behind the scenes, many survey tools, including KoboToolbox and ODK, use a format called XLSForm, and learning it gives you full control.
What XLSForm is
XLSForm is a way of writing a survey as a spreadsheet. You fill in rows and columns, upload the file, and the tool turns it into a form. A workbook has a survey sheet and a choices sheet, plus an optional settings sheet.
On the survey sheet, each row is one question. Three columns are required: