As a user I'd like to be able to upload incomplete submissions. Currently
only forms that are saved as Finalized at the end can be uploaded. However,
forms missing one or more required responses can't be marked as Final.
I think this is an important use case for anyone doing social science
research as incomplete submissions are still relevant for analysis. For
example, a large form of several hundred questions may be filled almost to
the end over the course of over an hour, but the respondent refuses to
finish the interview.
At the known moment the only solution to this issue is to pull all XML from
/odk/instances before integrating it again into whatever storage / analysis
table the user uses (via Briefcase, KoBoSync, Formhub, etc).
Does anyone else see value in a user being able to mark incomplete forms as
'Final' (or 'to be sent')? This could be a button in the Edit Saved Forms
screen, e.g. 'Mark Forms as Finalized', plus a Toggle All button or check
boxes. The availability of such a button should probably be controlled
through the Admin settings, where an admin user could hide this button from
end users.
I'm interested in feedback and ideas for such a feature, as we're quite
keen to make it happen. If there are any discussions around this that I
missed, please point me to them...
This is a frequent request we see as well. However, we have tended to
defend what I have understood to be the ODK position: if you start allowing
people not to supply required fields, then essentially "clean data" goes
out the window. Do you then also allow people to bypass field constraints
when those are inconvenient?
Essentially, all power is currently in the hands of form designers: if they
don't want fields to be required, then they're free to make them not
required. (I think that the "required" distinction can even be dynamic,
which might allow for all fields to be required -- unless some special
override field is set in a certain way. I'm not 100% sure of that, though,
since we generally document required as static yes/no and I haven't tried
it.) But if a form designer says that a field should be required, then I
feel that we have some responsibility to enforce that requirement. Again,
if we don't, then nobody gets clean data any more and suddenly CAPI data
starts sliding in the direction of PAPI data.
The argument that it would only be used in exceptional circumstances
doesn't quite convince me either. Once there is a way to escape from
validation requirements, I would be willing to bet good money that it would
be used far more frequently than we think. Perhaps that's a good thing, for
the many cases where a form's design is broken and enumerators need to
force what-should-be-valid responses or skips... but again, the basic link
between the form designer and the data that comes back will be compromised.
We recommend allowing both field-level refusal codes and module-by-module
consent. It's a pain, but then you can refuse all remaining questions in a
module and then refuse all remaining modules. That way, at least the data
is well-formed: you have refusal codes for a set of questions and then
consent=no for a set of modules. The data conforms to the design of the
form.
I'm sure that some of our users have been less than thrilled with that
position, though. But while I think that they'd be happy for us to just add
an "escape from requirements" option, I am pretty convinced that they
themselves would regret it...
Chris
ยทยทยท
On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 5:50 PM, Tino Kreutzer < tino.kreutzer@kobotoolbox.org> wrote:
Hi all,
As a user I'd like to be able to upload incomplete submissions. Currently
only forms that are saved as Finalized at the end can be uploaded. However,
forms missing one or more required responses can't be marked as Final.
I think this is an important use case for anyone doing social science
research as incomplete submissions are still relevant for analysis. For
example, a large form of several hundred questions may be filled almost to
the end over the course of over an hour, but the respondent refuses to
finish the interview.
At the known moment the only solution to this issue is to pull all XML
from /odk/instances before integrating it again into whatever storage /
analysis table the user uses (via Briefcase, KoBoSync, Formhub, etc).
Does anyone else see value in a user being able to mark incomplete forms
as 'Final' (or 'to be sent')? This could be a button in the Edit Saved
Forms screen, e.g. 'Mark Forms as Finalized', plus a Toggle All button or
check boxes. The availability of such a button should probably be
controlled through the Admin settings, where an admin user could hide this
button from end users.
I'm interested in feedback and ideas for such a feature, as we're quite
keen to make it happen. If there are any discussions around this that I
missed, please point me to them...
I agree with Chris. Allowing upload of incomplete submissions i.e. having
required questions that are unanswered in not a good solution as that will
lead to "unclean data" being uploaded all the time.
Some suggestions to deal with this problem:
In a Single Select question, always have an option called Unknown/99/999
In a Text type of question, fill in something like NA (code for Not
applicable) or NK (Not Known) etc.
You can train your data collectors to fill in all the empty required fields
with codes that indicate that they were not answered by the respondent.
This way, ODK Collect will be happy to mark such responses as Complete or
Finalized. If you have complete sections that are being skipped, then as
Chris suggested, you can have consent for the particular module.