BAIF Experience in Field Data Collection
Vinod V. Potdar, Kaustubh Bhave, Yuvraj Gaundare, Khadse JR, A.B. Pande · Performances of Cold-Set Binders Food Hydrocolloids and Commercial Meat Binder on the Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Tilapia Fish Balls · 2017
The increasing availability and capabilities of mobile phones make them a feasible means of data collection.Personal Digital Assistance (PDA) systems have been used widely for public health monitoring and surveillance activities, collecting survey data, clinical studies but documentation of their use in complicated research studies requiring multiple systems is limited.This paper shares our experiences of designing and implementing a complex multi-component system for a technical livestock community to help other researchers planning to use PDA for collecting technical data related to livestock studies.We designed and implemented different versions of mobile phone data collection systems to collect information related to bovine insemination through Cattle Development Centers (CDC) operated by BAIF.There was improvement in collecting field data by updating data logger's versions year by year.Following two to three days of training and piloting, data were collected from 170 field technicians over 5 years period from June 2010 to December 2015.Data logger was the one of easy solution for getting the technical, social and economic information of rural small farmer.Up to year 2015 project had collected the information enrolling of about 0.25 million families, out of that 95,000 families information about poverty index was collected and 0.67 million bovine insemination data, 0.46 insemination follow up records and information about 0.13 million female progeny born through the Project had collected.The PDAs were well accepted by technicians.The use of PDAs eliminated the usual time-consuming and error-prone process of data entry and validation.PDAs are a promising tool for field research in India.