Start & end time: Reliable?

Hey everyone!

1. What is the problem? Be very detailed.
In short: The start & end times of my survey submission seem suspicious. Could this be just a bug? Or is this an unmotivated surveyor trying to fraud with fake data?

Background: I was doing thesis research on farming practices in the Philippines. Due to the pandemic, I suddenly had to switch to a distant type of research. Luckily, my initial host organization said they would be happy to conduct the survey for me. Communication has however been difficult as deadlines are often not reached and it was sometimes hard to get any reply at all. I initialy sent my survey questions to them, only two months later to hear that they had not performed any surveys as they'd rather work paperless. That's how I came to ODK. In May I sent it to them again, and they told me they could have finished the 50 surveys by the end of June. When I didn't see any submission incoming though, I started checking on their progress. My contact person told me his colleagues had been performing surveys, but didn't know why they were not uploaded to the server yet. Finally, after a couple of weeks, on June 15 all at once 25 surveys were uploaded. Only the start/end times seem a bit suspicous.
Conducting a survey usually would take about 15-20 minutes, but some surveys have been filled in within 3-5 minutes as it seems. And all on the same date. Are the starting times accurate? The end time is June 15 everywhere so I am not sure.

I could also imagine this being a cultural difference; as a Dutchman I am pretty direct in my communication (a promise is a promise and I say it clearly when I cannot or do not want to do something) while I know this might be different in the Philippines.

2. What app or server are you using and on what device and operating system? Include version numbers.
ODK Collect (latest version? It's on other people's phones) Uploaded via KoboToolbox.

3. What you have you tried to fix the problem?
Nothing yet. I checked whether there would be time anomalies if I did a dummy survey but it didn't seem so.

4. What steps can we take to reproduce the problem?
Comfort me that this is just a bug and I should not be worried that I am being given fake survey results. Or just telling me I am, then I could find a new solution.

5. Anything else we should know or have? If you have a test form or screenshots or logs, attach below.

Welcome to the ODK forum, @sapperdeflap! We're glad you're here. When you get a chance, please introduce yourself on this forum thread. I'd also encourage you to add a picture as your avatar because it helps build community!

The start & end times should be reliable. It uses the device time, so if the date/time on the device is wrong, the submitted times will also be wrong. But that wouldn't cause the issue that you're seeing here.

They may have filled out paper forms during the survey, and then transferred it into the phone app at a later time?

It is possible to enable (prior to data collection) a more detailed audit log. It will provide details on time spent on each question, etc. For correctly setting up the audit feature with KoBo Toolbox you will need to check the KoBo forum and KoBo documentation.

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