Systems Analysis for a Complex Survey Design Application for Mobile Data Collection in the Context of the Federal Government Open Access
Lopez, Gerard William (2013)
Abstract
Abstract
Systems Analysis for a Complex Survey Design Application for Mobile Data Collection in the Context of the Federal Government
By Gerard W. Lopez
Data collected in the field through face-to-face interviews remains a cornerstone of public health research. This is particularly the case with global health research in developing countries where remote locations, limitations of communication infrastructure, lack of accurate census information to form sampling frames, illiterate or poorly educated populations, and the need to take samples or perform testing or medical interventions are all factors that make field data collection necessary for the foreseeable future.
With the advent of portable computing in the late 1990's in the form of personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptops, and other mobile or handheld computing devices, field data collection has been made faster and easier and produces more reliable results. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Division of Parasitic Disease and Malaria (DPDM) has long been at the forefront of using mobile data collection methods for field data collection. Unfortunately, the PDA platform DPDM has long supported has been rendered nearly obsolete.
DPDM has decided to modernize its platform to the Android operating system for smartphones and tablets. In conjunction with the University of the Valley of Guatemala (UVG), funds have been allocated to a project whose purpose is to update the Questionnaire Manager (QM) survey design application to the Android platform.
This document describes the systems analysis phase of the project. It describes how the scope of the project was defined, how the problem domain was explored, and how business requirements and logical design considerations were elicited. The process concludes with the final systems analysis decisions for the QM project. This systems analysis, while specific to the QM application, may be applicable to other questionnaire design applications, particularly in the field of mobile data collection on a smaller form factor such as a smartphone or PDA.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
I. Introduction...................................................................................................... 1
A. Background/Problem statement (general statement of the problem).................... 1
B. Significance Statement............................................................................... 3
C. Purpose Statement.................................................................................... 4
D. Assumptions............................................................................................. 5
E. Definitions of terms.................................................................................... 6
II. Review of the Literature..................................................................................... 8
A. Discussion of trends................................................................................... 8
B. Summary of current status of the problem.................................................... 14
C. Discussion of all possible solutions and their relative strengths and weaknesses... 21
III. Methodology.................................................................................................. 29
A. Description of chosen solution.................................................................... 29
B. Rationale for solution choice........................................................................ 33
C. Limitations............................................................................................... 34
IV. Results........................................................................................................... 35
A. Scope Definition........................................................................................ 35
B. Problem analysis........................................................................................ 37
C. Requirements analysis................................................................................ 61
D. Logical Design.......................................................................................... 76
E. Decision Analysis...................................................................................... 98
V. Conclusions and Implications............................................................................ 106
A. Conclusions........................................................................................... 106
B. Implications for practice.......................................................................... 106
References....................................................................................................... 108
Appendices....................................................................................................... 115
A. DPDM Extended Requirements................................................................... 115
B. Original QM Development Ideas.................................................................. 124
C. Aggregated Requirements, Problems and Improvements.................................. 130
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