ODK Central Food Security Mobile Data Collection Training Course

Course overview

Food security teams need reliable household- and market-level evidence while working across dispersed sites, intermittent connectivity, multiple enumerators, and sensitive respondent data. Poorly designed mobile forms create skipped questions, inconsistent food consumption recall periods, duplicate records, and weak audit trails—problems that can distort Food Consumption Score (FCS), Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS), reduced Coping Strategies Index (rCSI), and market monitoring results. This course equips practitioners to build and manage controlled ODK Central data collection workflows that produce analysis-ready records for assessments, monitoring, and humanitarian response decisions.

Participants configure ODK Central projects, user roles, app users, forms, submissions, and data exports for food security operations. They build XLSForms with relevant constraints, skip logic, repeats, calculations, choice filters, required fields, metadata, and language support. Using realistic household assessment and market-price scenarios, participants design forms around clear indicator definitions, recall periods, respondent safeguards, and enumerator workflows. They also learn how to test forms in ODK Collect and Enketo, monitor incoming submissions, identify data-quality exceptions, correct managed submissions, and export datasets for analysis.

Instruction combines guided demonstrations with daily build sessions using a food security assessment case. By the end of the week, each participant has configured an ODK Central project and produced a deployable mobile data collection package: a documented XLSForm, a tested field workflow, user-access settings, a data-quality review checklist, and an export plan. The course is especially valuable for programme teams preparing baseline surveys, rapid assessments, post-distribution monitoring, seasonal monitoring, or market surveillance activities.

Course objectives

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

• Configure an ODK Central project with appropriate project roles, app users, and form access controls.
• Build an XLSForm for household food security data using survey, choices, and settings worksheets.
• Implement skip logic, relevance conditions, constraints, calculations, repeats, and choice filters for assessment questionnaires.
• Translate food security indicator definitions into consistent questions, recall periods, response options, and validation rules.
• Deploy and test forms through ODK Collect and Enketo using realistic enumerator and respondent scenarios.
• Monitor ODK Central submissions using review states, submission metadata, audit-relevant fields, and error checks.
• Export clean food security datasets from ODK Central for analysis and produce a documented data dictionary.
• Create a field-ready deployment plan covering enumerator accounts, device preparation, consent, troubleshooting, and daily quality assurance.

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Food Security Officers — who need dependable household and market data for programme targeting and monitoring
• MEAL Officers — who design digital tools and must maintain traceable, analysis-ready monitoring datasets
• Assessment Coordinators — who manage rapid assessments, baselines, and multi-enumerator field deployments
• Humanitarian Information Management Officers — who administer data collection systems and support reporting teams
• Programme Managers — who need visibility of field data quality, collection progress, and access controls
• Field Coordinators — who supervise enumerators and need practical workflows for offline mobile data collection

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable using spreadsheets, managing files, and working with structured survey questions. Prior exposure to food security assessments, household surveys, MEAL indicators, or mobile data collection is helpful; participants should understand basic concepts such as respondents, consent, recall periods, response options, and data confidentiality. Some experience editing Excel workbooks is expected because forms are authored in XLSForm format. Familiarity with ODK, KoboToolbox, programming, database administration, or statistical software is not required. This is an intermediate course because it focuses on designing and managing production-quality workflows rather than introducing survey research from first principles.

Training methodology

The instructor uses a single food security assessment scenario throughout the five days, moving from questionnaire design to live deployment and data review. Short instructor-led sessions introduce each ODK Central feature, followed by supervised configuration in individual projects. Participants build and test forms on Android devices or emulators, review deliberately flawed submissions, and compare design choices in small groups. Case discussions address consent, offline collection, enumerator error, and indicator integrity. The final session is an implementation workshop in which participants adapt their project, quality checks, and rollout steps to an upcoming workplace activity.

Course outline

Day 1: Food security data workflows and ODK Central foundations

• Food security assessment workflows for household, market, and post-distribution data
• Indicator-driven questionnaire design for FCS, HDDS, rCSI, and market-price monitoring
• ODK Central architecture: projects, forms, submissions, users, and app users
• Project creation and project-role permissions in ODK Central
• App-user credentials and enumerator access management
• XLSForm workbook structure: survey, choices, and settings sheets
• Ethical data collection, consent wording, and respondent-identifying data minimisation

Workshop: Participants create an ODK Central project, define access roles, and map a household food security questionnaire into an initial XLSForm structure.

Day 2: Building validated food security forms in XLSForm

• Question types for numeric, select-one, select-multiple, date, location, image, and note fields
• Choice lists and coded responses for food groups, coping strategies, and market commodities
• Relevance conditions and skip logic for household composition and livelihood pathways
• Constraint expressions for plausible household size, quantities, prices, and recall-period responses
• Required fields, constraint messages, and multilingual labels
• Calculation fields for totals, derived values, and enumerator-facing checks
• Repeats for household members, food consumption items, market vendors, and distribution items

Workshop: Participants build a validated household food consumption and coping questionnaire with skips, constraints, calculations, and repeat groups.

Day 3: Deployment, offline collection, and field testing

• Form upload, versioning, publishing, and retirement in ODK Central
• ODK Collect configuration and secure form download using app-user accounts
• Enketo web-form access and browser-based testing
• Offline collection, blank form management, and submission synchronisation
• Device settings for dates, language, location capture, media, and storage
• Form testing scripts for normal, edge-case, and failed-validation scenarios
• Enumerator instructions for consent, probing, saving drafts, and resolving device issues

Workshop: Participants publish their form, collect and synchronise test interviews through ODK Collect or Enketo, and document defects found during a structured test.

Day 4: Submission monitoring and food security data quality control

• ODK Central submission lists, filters, review states, and correction workflows
• Submission metadata: timestamps, device identifiers, locations, and enumerator attribution
• Daily checks for duplicates, missing modules, extreme values, and inconsistent response patterns
• Reviewing repeat data and linked household-level records
• Managed submission edits, correction notes, and audit-aware governance
• Data-quality rules for food consumption recall, prices, units, and coping responses
• Operational dashboards and supervisor escalation routines for active data collection

Workshop: Participants review a seeded set of flawed household and market submissions, apply review decisions, and produce a daily field-quality checklist.

Day 5: Export, handover, and operational rollout planning

• CSV and Excel exports from ODK Central and handling repeat-group files
• Data dictionary creation from XLSForm names, labels, codes, and calculations
• Preparing datasets for indicator calculation and downstream analysis
• Version-control practices for forms, change logs, and approved question libraries
• Access revocation, project handover, retention, and secure archive procedures
• Enumerator training plans, pilot protocols, and field-support arrangements
• Implementation planning for a baseline, rapid assessment, or market-monitoring round

Workshop: Participants finalise a field-ready ODK Central package comprising a deployed form, data dictionary, quality-control checklist, and rollout plan for their own use case.

Tools & standards covered

ODK Central, ODK Collect, XLSForm, Enketo

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