Abstract
BackgroundTo investigate the feasibility, the ease of implementation, and the extent to which community health workers with little experience of data collection could be trained and successfully supervised to collect data using mobile phones in a large baseline surveyMethodsA web-based system was developed to allow electronic surveys or questionnaires to be designed on a word processor, sent to, and conducted on standard entry level mobile phones.ResultsThe web-based interface permitted comprehensive daily real-time supervision of CHW performance, with no data loss. The system permitted the early detection of data fabrication in combination with real-time quality control and data collector supervision.ConclusionsThe benefits of mobile technology, combined with the improvement that mobile phones offer over PDA's in terms of data loss and uploading difficulties, make mobile phones a feasible method of data collection that needs to be further explored.
Highlights
To investigate the feasibility, the ease of implementation, and the extent to which community health workers with little experience of data collection could be trained and successfully supervised to collect data using mobile phones in a large baseline survey
In this paper we report on the use of mobile phones in a survey conducted in a peri-urban settlement in South Africa using lay community health workers
The ease of implementation, and the extent to which community health workers with little experience in electronic data collection could be trained and successfully supervised to collect data using mobile phones in a large health survey
Summary
The ease of implementation, and the extent to which community health workers with little experience of data collection could be trained and successfully supervised to collect data using mobile phones in a large baseline survey. Large field surveys are a common feature of the health research landscape. In low and middle income countries where capacity and administrative problems with the collection of health data are common, surveys are often the only way to collect reliable data [1,2]. Electronic methods of data collection have been developed in order to merge the process of data collection and data entry [2]. Handheld devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) are increasingly being used instead of paper and pencil methods of data collection [1,3]. PDAs are not without problems of their own, including the challenges associated with having to download data
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