3. Design a questionnaire
According to the ODK Website, the next-generation of ODK tools are intended to address several limitations of the existing ODK 1.0 data collection workflow.
- Fully customizable layout of prompts on the Android device. The 2.0 tools use HTML, Javascript and CSS to specify the layout of nearly all the screens viewed by the data collectors. This enables individuals and organizations with basic web development skills to modify and customize the appearance of their surveys and workflow. At the same time, we retain the easy-to-use spreadsheet-based definition of the survey questions (however, this XLSXConverter mechanism is not cross-compatible with XLSForm).
- More flexible, user-directed, navigation of a survey. The 2.0 tools do not impose a strict sequential advancement through a form like ODK Collect; form designers can allow users to traverse a form in any order, yet impose validation of collected data prior to traversing into subsequent steps in a workflow.
- Improved treatment of repeat-groups. In the 2.0 tools, we have eliminated the concept of a repeat-group. In its place, we provide prompts that enable you to open and edit other surveys with links back to the originating survey (if desired). These prompts can describe a sub-form (nested) relationship among the surveys (e.g., household and household-member) or they can represent arbitrary relational linkages across your data (e.g., tea-houses and tea-types).
- Bi-directional synchronization of data across devices. The ODK 2.0 tools support the collaborative sharing of survey data across devices, and the updating and submission of changes to previously-collected data (i.e., follow-up surveys) via a bi-directional synchronization protocol; this contrasts with the uni-directional device-to-server submission pathway of ODK Collect / ODK Aggregate / ODK Briefcase.
- Data curation and visualization on the device. ODK Tables gives organizations the ability to investigate and visualize entire datasets directly on the Android devices through graphical and non-graphical displays and through filtered views.
- Eliminate the need to fork the underlying Java codebase. The ODK 2.0 tools include an Application Packager that will eliminate the need for an organization to fork and maintain their own versions of the ODK Survey or ODK Tables applications in order to create their own branded and controlled app.
The most important point that applies to the configuration of EpiSample is that the XLSXConverter mechanism is not cross-compatible with XLSForm. I.e. forms are not created as in ODK 1.0 from an XLS file and then converted to XML with XLSForm.
In ODK 2.0, forms are creating with ODK Application Designer.
According to the ODK Website the ODK Application Designer, when combined with Excel or OpenOffice for form design, the Chrome browser and your favorite editor for template design, provides a development environment for the design of data collection applications.
In the context of the ODK 2.0 tools, application design consists of:
- designing the forms used in data collection (by ODK Survey).
- designing the HTML landing pages and screens used for navigating, curating, and visualizing that data on your Android device (within ODK Tables).
- customizing the look-and-feel of both of these via customized images, logos, and CSS rules.
- designing mark-sense forms for paper-based data entry (by ODK Scan).
It is important to notice here that EpiSample was implemented by using the version 2.0_alpha_3_rev_126 (February 10, 2015) of ODK Application Designer. This is crucial because the way forms are designed differ from the last version of the Aplication Designer (at the time of this writing, rev 204). For instance, the headers display.prompt.text or display.title.text while they are parsed by the rev 204, they are not recognized by EpiSample provoking an exception when launching the App.
Other important issue is within the choices tab. Whether rev 204 does not have problems assigning numerical codes to the data_value column, the ODK Survey rev 126 has some usability problems when these values are numerical. For instance, if we create a yes/no variable as a select_one field where the no option is equal to 0 and yes to 1, when the user selects any option, ODK Survey will deselect it automatically because the framework does not recognize numerical data values.
These are some of the issues found, however you may find different ones if you use other Application Designer version for creating your questionnaires.
Therefore, we highly recommend to use the ODK Application Designer rev 126 for questionnaire design.
XLSXConverter is a tool similar to XLSForm that converts xlsx files into survey definition files that are used by ODK Survey. Forms created with XLSXConverter are not compatible with ODK Collect. They only work with ODK Survey.
This tool is included in the ODK Application Designer and allows to convert the xlsx file representing the questionnaire into a json file used by EpiSample.
Although in the XLSX Converter - rev 126 page you can find an example form that can be loaded to EpiSample. Here we are providing a simple example survey intended to get started. With these two forms you may be able to see the format required by XLSX Converter to process the formDef.json file used by EpiSample.