Data Collection in Project Monitoring: Paper vs. Phone (1 of 3)

The original blog post ws published on our blog: www.kinaki-blog.org . This is the first article out of three.

Over the past couple of months we’ve run some workshops on collecting data with mobile phones – Android smart phones to be specific. Using new technology can make a dull task like data collection exciting and more efficient. However, it’s easy to get caught up in all of the benefits that new technology has to offer and forget to carefully consider its appropriateness. There are lots of great documents out there on using mobile technology for data collection (see the references at the end of this post). We’ve created a quick overview (i.e. not an exhaustive list) of the pros and cons of data collection with smart phones vs. paper surveys:

(Check out the other posts in this trilogy: 6 Key Questions to ask when considering collecting data with smartphones & Choosing the Right App)

Interested in learning more? Contact us at www.kinaki-blog.org and check out the resources below:

• Mobile-Based technology for Monitoring and Evaluation (this document has a great, and much more comprehensive, comparison of paper and mobile surveys than ours): http://www.theclearinitiative.org/mobile-based-tech.pdf
• Mobile Technology Handbook: http://www.pactworld.org/blog/pact%E2%80%99s-mobile-technology-handbook-debuts