221471 General Survey System: A Mobile Technologies System for Data Collection and Management

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 : 8:30 AM - 8:48 AM

Jay Levinsohn, PhD , RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC
Donna Medeiros , Research Triangle Institute International, Research Triangle Park, NC
Jennifer Duke, PhD , RTI International, Boulder, CO
Patricia Yost , Research Computing Divison, RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC
Stephen Litavecz , RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC
Robert Hughes , Research Computing Division, RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC
Yuying Zhang, MS , Social and Statistical Sciences, RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC
Renee' Karlsen , Research Computing, RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC
Frances Stillman, EdD , Johns Hopkins, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Carol Schmitt, PhD , RTI International, Washington, DC
Background: RTI International has been developing mobile data capture systems for the past 10 years. In particular, one system provides Field Interviewers with handheld computers and software that manage the capture of interview or inventory data in highly mobile environments, such as household doorway screening and interviewing, and for vendor, intercept, and hospital surveys. This paper describes the current system and its uses for capturing health data. Objective/Purpose: This paper explains the General Survey System (GSS) for handheld computers and discusses study implementation aspects including prevalence surveys with global surveillance relevance. We also describe GSS features and examine GSS use in survey data collection and management. Methods: Based on our work on federally funded projects, RTI International has developed a handheld computer-based system for mobile data collection on handheld computers running Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. GSS is a forms-based system that allows users to develop forms and logic to manage and direct the data capture process. It was developed in Microsoft Visual Basic.net and supports • a wide variety of data types, • range and validity checking, • GPS capture, • dynamic sample selection in real time, • complex data capture logic and sequences, • large capacity data storage, • case management and status recording, • a PC-based developers environment for instrument development and data processing, • data file format usable by statistical software, and • internationalization: supports multiple languages and complex Unicode fonts (e.g., Arabic, Mandarin).

Results: The GSS has been in production for over 5 years and continues to evolve based on study requirements. It has been used to conduct over 200,000 interviews in more than 12 countries in 30 languages for more than a dozen study applications. Conclusion: GSS is a proven reliable and flexible survey system that is available for the research community.

Learning Areas:
Public health or related organizational policy, standards, or other guidelines
Public health or related public policy
Public health or related research
Social and behavioral sciences
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
• Describe the utility of mobile computer-managed data collection. • Describe the GSS mobile data collection features. • Demonstrate the survey system’s application to health-related data collection. • Discuss future plans in public health surveillance mobile data collection and management.

Keywords: Public Health Informatics, Survey

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am qualified to present because I have served as an IT specialist and data manager for the study being submitted and have a long history in computer science and public health informatics.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 5050.0: Computational Methods for Data Collection and Reporting