Training on

KoBoToolbox for Data Collection

&
Introduction to Data Analysis Using Stata

Part 1: KoBoToolbox
Introduction to Kobo Toolbox
Kobo Toolbox is a free and open-source suite of tools for field data collection. The web Kobo
Toolbox application allows user design complex forms, deploy and download submitted data.
Besides the interactive online form builder/designer a pre-designed XLS form can be uploaded
on the Kobo Toolbox platform. Uploaded form or designed on online interactive application page
saved as a draft for preview and testing before deployed for data collection. Data can be
collected online using ENKETO on browser and offline data collection using KoboCollect mobile
application.

Create an account
To upload or create survey form on Kobo Toolbox you will need to have a Kobo account. The
platform lets you create account in either of two ways, one for a “Humanitarian Organization”
account or a “Researcher, Aid Worker, and Everyone Else” account. For this exercise choose the
“Researcher, Aid Worker, and Everyone Else” option.

To create an account, go to https://kf.kobotoolbox.org/accounts/register/#/

1. Click on create account, and then enter the necessary details to create the account.
If the account has been created successfully, the account creation page comes up with
instructions on what to do next.
2. Click the activation link in the email sent to your email address. Once the activation link is
clicked, a new web page appears showing the kobo toolbox interface necessary to create
new projects.

Create your survey

KoBoToolbox has an intuitive design form. A new survey can be created by clicking on "New" at
the top right.

There are four options available to you.

The first option is "Build from Scratch". If you would like to use the interactive designer, you can
create your own survey from scratch. Another option is to upload an XLSForm, this is the option
this training is based on.
For this exercise, the XLSForm is located in the Dropbox shared folder
After you have created your survey, you can preview, edit if necessary, and deploy it. You can
also redeploy the survey if you make any updates or edits. A survey cannot collect data unless it
is deployed.
Create a survey: “Build from scratch”

1. Click on “New” (1) to open a ‘Create project’ dialog box from which select “Build from
scratch” (2).
2. Place appropriate project name (1) and short description (2) of the project. Specify the
sector (3) and country (4) of the project.

Please fill in the following information for this exercise

1. Project Name: “Sample socio-economic survey questionnaire”

2. Description: “The purpose of this questionnaire is to collect fictitious socioeconomic data

for training purposes.”

3. Sector: select Economic/Social Development

4. Country: PNG

5. Check/Uncheck: In accordance with the data collection protocol and privacy policies.
6. Add your first question by clicking the + button.

7. Write the first question as "Surveyor name"

8. Then click Add Question and select appropriate data type to represent the response. In this
case select Text as a response data type.

9. It is helpful to explore and test other question types (yes/no; multiple choice with multiple
answers, number, etc), as this allows you set different data type response. Add more
question fields like ‘Province’, ‘District’, ‘Age’, ‘Sources household income’, ‘specify currency
type for the income’ etc.
10. Using the icons on the right side of the question, you can edit a question's settings, delete
it, duplicate it, or put it into the library for later use.

11. To experiment how to use the settings, by clicking ‘gear’ icon change the mandatory
response option to ‘Yes’.
12. You can preview how your survey will look after entering your questions by clicking the eye
icon in the top left-hand corner. To check for errors, enter some information and click on
the 'Validate' button.

13. The form can be saved by clicking the Save/Create button and then closing it by clicking 'X'.
14. To return to the default project page, click the Kobo icon in the upper right-hand corner.
You will be redirected to the project page. Click on the “Sample socio-economic survey
questionnaire” form.

15. Now you are in the survey settings. To launch the survey, click 'Deploy'.

16. After you deploy the form, you can select 'Online-Offline (Multiple submissions)' under
collect data. You can copy the link by clicking the 'COPY' icon to share with your team or
paste the http link into a search engine to open the questionnaire in a browser.

17. Particularly after data submission you can find a comprehensive overview of your survey on
the Summary tab. The application will allow you to view the results of your survey, share
the project with colleagues and edit the form. Whenever you make changes to the form,
you have to do a re-deploy.

18. The next section of the training focuses on designing questionnaires in Excel and
uploading them to Kobo.
Getting started with XLSForm

What is an XLSForm?

XLSForm is a form standard created to help simplify the authoring of forms in Excel. Authoring
is done in a human readable format using a familiar tool that almost everyone knows - Excel.
XLSForms provide a practical standard for sharing and collaborating on authoring forms. They
are simple to get started with but allow for the authoring of complex forms by someone
familiar with the syntax described below.
The XLSForm is then converted to an ODK XForm, a popular open form standard, that allows
you to author a form with complex functionality like skip logic in a consistent way across a
number of web and mobile data collection platforms.
• Set up an XLSForm using Microsoft Excel.
• Upload and preview the XLSForm in KoboToolbox.
• Download a form you have been creating using the KoboToolbox form builder as an
XLSForm.

Basic format
Each Excel workbook usually has two worksheets: survey and choices. A third optional
worksheet called settings can add additional specifications to your form and is described below.

The survey worksheet has 3 mandatory columns: type, name, and label.
• The type column specifies the type of entry you are adding.
• The name column specifies the unique variable name for that entry. No two entries can
have the same name. Names have to start with a letter or an underscore. Names can
only contain letters, digits, hyphens, underscores, and periods. Names are case-
sensitive.
• The label column contains the actual text you see in the form. Alternatively, label
translation columns can be used.
The choices worksheet has 3 mandatory columns as well: list name, name, and label.
• The list name column lets you group together a set of related answer choices, i.e.,
answer choices that should appear together under a question.
• The name column specifies the unique variable name for that answer choice.
• The label column shows the answer choice exactly as you want it to appear on the form.
Alternatively, label translation columns can be used.

The columns you add to your Excel workbook, whether they are mandatory or optional, may
appear in any order. Optional columns may be left out completely. Any number of rows may be
left blank. All .xls file formatting is ignored, so you can use dividing lines, shading, and other
font formatting to make the form more readable.

One thing to keep in mind when authoring forms in Excel is that the syntax you use must be
precise. For example, if you write Choices or choice instead of choices, the form won't work.

How to set up XLSForm

To get started with XLSForm, do the following:

1. Create a workbook (either in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets).

 2. Create three worksheets: survey, choices, and settings respectively (sheet names must
all be in lowercase).
3. In the survey worksheet, create three columns with headings: type, name, and label.
4. In the choices worksheet, create three columns with headings: list_name, name, label.
5. In the settings worksheet, create a column named form_title (the settings sheet is
optional)

Adding questions
Questions in XLSForm go in the survey sheet. We will practice adding a few questions: What is
your name, Sex and How old are you?
1. In the survey sheet, under the type column, type “text”. This is the question type for
your first question. To learn more about question types in XLSForm, see the table below.
2. Under the name column, type “yourname”. This will be the variable name of our first
question. The variable name uniquely identifies each question in the form. It’s also the
name of the question in the database when we start collecting data. Each question must
have a unique name and cannot contain spaces or symbols (except the underscore).
3. Under the label column, type “What is your name”. This label will be shown as the
question text on the form when we collect data.
For second question:
4. Still in the survey sheet, type select_one gender in the type column below the previous
question (make sure to put a space between the 2 words). select_one is the question
type that allows us to specify a list of choices where a user will only be allowed to pick
one choice. (If a user can select several choices, this would be specified by
the select_multiple question type.) “sex” is the name of the list of choices which we
have to define in the choices sheet.
5. Type the name and label of the question as “sex” and “Sex” respectively.
 Question type Answer input
integer Integer (i.e., whole number) input.
decimal Decimal input.
range Range input (including rating)
text Free text response.
select_one [options] Multiple choice question; only one answer can be selected.
Multiple choice question; multiple answers can be
select_multiple [options]
selected.
select_one_from_file
Multiple choice from file; only one answer can be selected.
[file]
select_multiple_from_file Multiple choice from file; multiple answers can be
[file] selected.
rank [options] Rank question; order a list.
Display a note on the screen, takes no input. Shorthand for
note
type=text with readonly=true.
geopoint Collect a single GPS coordinate.
geotrace Record a line of two or more GPS coordinates.
Record a polygon of multiple GPS coordinates; the last
geoshape
point is the same as the first point.
date Date input.
time Time input.
dateTime Accepts a date and a time input.
image Take a picture or upload an image file.
audio Take an audio recording or upload an audio file.
background-audio Audio is recorded in the background while filling the form.
video Take a video recording or upload a video file.
file Generic file input (txt, pdf, xls, xlsx, doc, docx, rtf, zip)
Scan a barcode, requires the barcode scanner app to be
barcode
installed.
calculate Perform a calculation; see the Calculation section below.
acknowledge Acknowledge prompt that sets value to "OK" if selected.
A field with no associated UI element which can be used to
hidden
store a constant
xml-external Adds a reference to an external XML data file

Adding choices
Regardless of the type of multiple-choice question (select_one or select_multiple), the next
step will be to define the list of choices in the choices sheet. Each list of choices must have the
same list_name.
Since we defined one question that has a list of choices (”sex”) in the previous step, we need to
add this list in the choices sheet as follows:

1. Switch to the choices sheet so that you can add your list of choices for the “Sex”
question.
2. In the cell below list_name, type “sex”. bodyThis is the list name we defined for the
“Sex” question in the survey sheet. In the cell below name, type “male”. This is the
value that will be stored when the user chooses the option “Male”. Under label,
type “Male”. This is what will be shown for this option in the survey.
3. For the second choice, type “sex” as list_name, “female” as the name, and
“Female” as the label.

Adding settings¶
It is not mandatory to include the settings sheet in the XLSForm - any form will work just fine
without it. However, at minimum, you can define the form_title.

Without the form_title in the settings sheet, KoboToolbox will, by default, use the file name as
the name of the project when you import the XLSForm.

Uploading and previewing the XLSForm in KoboToolbox

Once you have finished creating the XLSForm you must upload it to KoboToolbox in order to
preview it.
1. While you are on the Project List view (the first screen after you have just logged in to
KoboToolbox), click NEW.
2. Click Upload an XLSForm .
3. Choose the Excel file you just created and wait until it uploads.
4. Confirm the project details and click CREATE PROJECT.
5. You can then click the Preview form button to preview your form.
Downloading an XLSForm from KoboToolbox
KoboToolbox allows you to download a form you have been creating using the form builder as
an XLSForm file. This might be useful for several reasons such as:

• You need to add some advanced features that are not yet supported in the form
builder.
• You would like to make changes to the form that might be easier through XLSForm
(such as quickly duplicating a large number of questions).
• Your computer resources such as your browser or internet connection.
• You would like to collaborate on the form with members of your team and you
prefer sharing the XLSForm.
• Manage versioning of your form outside of the KoboToolbox platform.
• You are needing assistance from the support team and need to share your form with
us.

To download the XLSForm while you are on the Project List view:

1. Hover your mouse over the name of the project.

2. Click the More actions icon.
3. Click Download XLS.
4. Save the file.

Replacing a form with an XLSForm file

You can replace an existing form with a new version using an XLSForm (for example, after
having edited the form in Excel). To do this while you are on the Project List view:

1. Hover your mouse over the name of the project.

2. Click the More actions icon.
3. Click Replace form.
4. Choose the file.
Source:

https://support.kobotoolbox.org/question_library.html

https://docs.getodk.org/xlsform/