On Tuesday, 25 January 2011 we will be deploying a major update to the Analytics section. The Analytics section provides access to raw data, reports and export functionality for all your data collected using Mobile Researcher.
A common and powerful feature used by survey designers is the ability to make a section repeat based on the value of a numeric field captured in the survey. For example, imagine your survey collects biographical information about the members of a household. Using this functionality, you can prompt a fieldworker to record the number of household members, then configure the survey to iterate through each person in turn and capture their information. The mobile application automatically repeats the relevant questions based on the number of household members entered.
As useful as this feature is, one challenge is how to analyse this data once captured (because the questions are generated dynamically). Currently, each iteration is displayed as a separate column which means that if you have a section with 5 questions which repeats 10 times, 50 columns would be generated. Although you can still analyse the data in this format, we received numerous requests for the repeats to be displayed as rows rather than as columns. Once this deployment goes live on Tuesday, repeated sections will be shown in rows which should make analysis much simpler.
Instead of the entire survey being displayed in one grid, we will now display each section separately allowing you to move from one section to the next easily.
We’ll also be releasing some upgrades to the filtering abilities, now allowing you to filter by multiple fieldworkers and languages. When generating export files, you will now be able to select from 3 options outlined below:
• Comma Separated Variables (CSV): Each section of the survey is a separate file. Files are Zipped into a single folder for download.
• Microsoft Excel 2007 (or later): One worksheet is created for each section of the survey.
• Microsoft Excel 2003: One worksheet is created for each section of the survey. To compensate for a limitation in Microsoft Excel ® 2003 and earlier, response data with more than 256 fields will be split up into separate sheets.
In addition to exporting raw data in the traditional column/row format, we’ll now also export in a format which is ready to be used for the generation of pivot tables. We’ve also reformatted the way in which we export survey metadata such as question names and option labels to make importing this information into a statistics package much simpler.
Another important change is how you edit responses (if you have permission to do so, of course). Instead of making changes in the grid which was a little confusing, we’ve refactored this process and you now edit submissions individually.
Finally, you can also now perform bulk deletes (with necessary permissions) – very useful for clearing out test or training data.

On Tuesday, 25 January 2011 we will be deploying a major update to the Analytics section. The Analytics section provides access to raw data, reports and export functionality for all your data collected using Mobile Researcher.

A common and powerful feature used by survey designers is the ability to make a section repeat based on the value of a numeric field captured in the survey. For example, imagine your survey collects biographical information about the members of a household. Using this functionality, you can prompt a fieldworker to record the number of household members, then configure the survey to iterate through each person in turn and capture their information. The mobile application automatically repeats the relevant questions based on the number of household members entered.

As useful as this feature is, one challenge is how to analyse this data once captured (because the questions are generated dynamically). Currently, each iteration is displayed as a separate column which means that if you have a section with 5 questions which repeats 10 times, 50 columns would be generated. Although you can still analyse the data in this format, we received numerous requests for the repeats to be displayed as rows rather than as columns. Once this deployment goes live on Tuesday, repeated sections will be shown in rows which should make analysis much simpler.

Instead of the entire survey being displayed in one grid, we will now display each section separately allowing you to move from one section to the next easily.

We’ll also be releasing some upgrades to the filtering abilities, now allowing you to filter by multiple fieldworkers and languages. When generating export files, you will now be able to select from 3 options outlined below:

  • Comma Separated Variables (CSV): Each section of the survey is a separate file. Files are Zipped into a single folder for download.
  • Microsoft Excel 2007 (or later): One worksheet is created for each section of the survey.
  • Microsoft Excel 2003: One worksheet is created for each section of the survey. To compensate for a limitation in Microsoft Excel ® 2003 and earlier, response data with more than 256 fields will be split up into separate sheets.

In addition to exporting raw data in the traditional column/row format, we’ll now also export in a format which is ready to be used for the generation of pivot tables. We’ve also reformatted the way in which we export survey metadata such as question names and option labels to make importing this information into a statistics package much simpler.

Another important change is how you edit responses (if you have permission to do so, of course). Instead of making changes in the grid which was a little confusing, we’ve refactored this process and you now edit submissions individually.

Finally, you can also now perform bulk deletes (with necessary permissions) – very useful for clearing out test or training data.