KoboToolbox Public Health Field Survey Design Training Course

Course overview

Public health teams depend on field data to identify service gaps, monitor outbreaks, assess programme coverage and report credible results to funders and health authorities. Yet surveys built without clear case definitions, validation rules, skip logic or consent controls can produce duplicate records, missing denominators and unusable data. This course addresses the practical challenge of translating a public health information need into a mobile-ready KoboToolbox survey that field teams can use consistently in clinics, communities, campaigns and rapid assessments.

Participants learn to design questionnaires around indicators, target populations and decision-use cases; build forms in KoboToolbox and XLSForm; configure question types, constraints, relevance logic, calculations, groups, repeat sections and multilingual labels; and set up ethical consent and data-protection measures. The course covers offline data collection with KoboCollect, fieldworker accounts, form deployment, submission review, data cleaning and exports for analysis. Participants also learn how to test a form against realistic public health scenarios such as household immunisation coverage, community health worker supervision or facility readiness assessment.

Delivery combines instructor demonstrations with guided build sessions, peer review and troubleshooting of realistic survey failures. Each participant develops, tests and revises a complete KoboToolbox form for a defined public health use case, supported by a survey specification, data dictionary and field deployment checklist. Managers gain staff who can reduce reliance on external form developers, improve field-data quality controls and establish more consistent collection practices across projects.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Define a public health survey specification linking objectives, indicators, respondents, variables and reporting decisions
• Build a KoboToolbox questionnaire using appropriate question types, groups, required fields and help text
• Configure XLSForm choice lists, appearance settings and multilingual labels for field-ready mobile forms
• Apply validation constraints, relevance logic and skip patterns to prevent inconsistent or ineligible responses
• Create repeat groups and calculated fields for household members, service encounters and stock-item records
• Set up informed-consent questions and data-minimisation controls appropriate for public health fieldwork
• Deploy and test forms through KoboCollect using offline collection, user accounts and submission workflows
• Export, review and document cleaned survey data using a data dictionary and quality-assurance checklist

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Officers — who need reliable mobile tools for programme indicators and routine field verification
• Public Health Officers — who collect or commission evidence for disease surveillance, service coverage and community interventions
• Research Assistants — who must convert approved protocols and questionnaires into usable digital data-collection forms
• Health Programme Managers — who need visibility of field-data quality, enumerator workflows and reporting readiness
• Community Health Programme Coordinators — who manage household visits, supervision forms and frontline service records
• NGO Data Managers — who standardise survey forms, permissions, exports and data-quality processes across projects

Requirements and prerequisites

This is a foundation-to-intermediate course and does not require previous KoboToolbox experience or programming knowledge. Participants should be comfortable using a web browser, spreadsheets and Android mobile applications, and should understand the basic purpose of surveys, indicators and respondent questions in a health programme. Familiarity with Excel is useful because XLSForm structures are introduced, but templates are supplied and explained. A complete beginner should expect to build forms step by step. Participants do not need prior experience with statistical analysis, GIS, SQL, R or Python.

Training methodology

The instructor uses a public health case scenario throughout the week, moving from an indicator question to a deployed mobile form and usable dataset. Short demonstrations in KoboToolbox and KoboCollect are followed by guided individual builds, spreadsheet-based XLSForm edits and structured peer testing. Participants review deliberately flawed forms to find consent gaps, invalid ranges and broken skip patterns. Small groups simulate enumerator use in offline conditions, then inspect submissions and exports. The final session ends with an application plan for adapting the participant’s form to their own field programme.

Course outline

Day 1: From public health question to survey specification

• Public health survey purposes: surveillance, coverage, supervision and facility assessment
• Translating programme objectives into measurable indicators and variables
• Defining respondents, units of analysis, denominators and case definitions
• Question wording for recall periods, symptoms, services and household characteristics
• Survey flow design from consent through eligibility, interview and closure
• KoboToolbox project workspace, form lifecycle and data-collection architecture
• Survey specification templates and data dictionary foundations

Workshop: Participants create a survey specification and draft questionnaire flow for a household immunisation coverage assessment.

Day 2: Building robust KoboToolbox forms

• Creating projects and forms in the KoboToolbox Formbuilder
• Selecting question types for categorical, numeric, date, location and media data
• Organising sections with groups, headings, hints and required responses
• Designing choice lists and coded response options for analysis-ready data
• Configuring numeric ranges, date limits and text validation constraints
• Using relevant and required logic to control question display
• Previewing forms in web and mobile layouts

Workshop: Participants build the first working version of their coverage survey in KoboToolbox and run a structured form walkthrough.

Day 3: XLSForm logic, repeats and ethical design

• XLSForm workbook structure: survey, choices and settings sheets
• Question names, labels, choice filters and appearance columns
• Relevance expressions for eligibility screening and conditional pathways
• Calculated fields for age bands, totals and derived service indicators
• Repeat groups for household members, children and multiple service visits
• Informed consent, assent, refusal handling and sensitive-question design
• Multilingual forms, translation workflows and label quality checks

Workshop: Participants convert selected sections into XLSForm, add a household-member repeat group and peer-test the consent and eligibility logic.

Day 4: Field deployment and data-quality management

• Form versioning, deployment decisions and safe change-control practices
• KoboCollect installation, server configuration and offline blank-form downloads
• Enumerator accounts, permissions and device-level operational controls
• Capturing GPS points, timestamps, photographs and signatures responsibly
• Pilot testing with scripted test cases and edge-case responses
• Reviewing submissions for completeness, duplicates and logical inconsistencies
• Fieldworker briefing packs, escalation routes and daily quality checks

Workshop: Participants deploy their form to KoboCollect, complete offline test interviews and produce a pilot-test issue log.

Day 5: Exports, reporting readiness and implementation planning

• KoboToolbox table views, filters and submission review workflow
• Exporting CSV and XLSX files with labels, codes and repeat-group records
• Cleaning common errors using spreadsheet filters, checks and audit notes
• Preparing a data dictionary, codebook and fieldwork metadata record
• Linking survey variables to indicator calculations and reporting tables
• Mapping exported location data in QGIS for basic coverage review
• Creating a rollout plan for training, piloting, monitoring and form maintenance

Workshop: Participants export and review their test data, finalise a deployment pack and present a rollout plan for their public health survey.

Tools & standards covered

KoboToolbox, KoboCollect, XLSForm, QGIS

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions