What makes a good data entry form

How to Design a Data Entry Form Here are a few ideas for designing cost effective data entry forms that promote accurate and uniform data collection. Keep it simple and short to encourage more responses. Name with middle initial: 25 characters Street address: 25 characters City: 15 characters State: 2 characters Zip: 9 characters with dash E-mail address: characters For forms with more than ten questions, show the question number on the form, right next to field.

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The process is the same for both SharePoint or OneDrive. This will prompt us to name the Excel workbook and open up a new browser tab where we can build our form by adding different types of questions. We first need to create the Form and this will create the table in our Excel workbook where the data will get populated.

Then we can share the form with anyone we want to input data into Excel. When a user enters data into the form and presses the submit button, that data will automatically show up into our Excel workbook.

Power Apps is a flexible drag and drop formula based app building platform from Microsoft. In fact, if we have a table of data set up, Power Apps will create the app for us based on our data.

Sign in to the powerapps. This is all connected to our Excel table, so any changes or additions from the app will show up in Excel. But we can use the button trigger to make an automation that captures user input and adds the data into an Excel table. So if you follow all the steps in this guide you could potentially cut your data entry time almost in half.

How to design survey forms for quick data entry Surveys are a common activity in international development. This advice is for: Basic surveys such as feedback forms, needs assessments, simple baseline and endline surveys etc. Sample sizes in the hundreds. Surveys completed on paper. Written surveys completed by individuals who are literate.

This advice is NOT for: Complex baseline and endline surveys or research studies. Sample sizes in the thousands. Surveys completed online or on a mobile. Graphical surveys completed by people with low literacy. These two problems can be easily solved by adding numbers: Now instead of entering the whole answer into the spreadsheet, you only need to enter the answer number e.

Use circles for select one and squares for select all Once all of the questions and answers are numbered, the next step is to make sure that questions with only one answer use circles and questions with more than one answer use squares.

Below are examples of each type: Using different shapes for different questions helps both the person completing the survey and the person doing the data entry.

Separate and align questions using formatting The next step is to format the survey. Below is an example of a well formatted survey: Aligning the answers down the page means the person entering the data only needs to look in one place for the answers. Add space for an ID number Space for an ID number should be added to the top right corner of the survey, on the first page. Use a basic spreadsheet in the software you feel most comfortable with Once the surveys have been printed, completed and returned, you are now ready to start data entry.

Put the question numbers in the first row, and shade groups of questions Before entering any data you need to put the question numbers at the top of the spreadsheet. Enter one survey per row Now all you need to do is enter one survey per row into the spreadsheet. Check the data using a filter or sorting The next step is checking the data for unusual numbers.

Find and replace the numbers optional Once you start the analysis sometimes it can be useful to find and replace the numbers with the text values from the survey. These steps were created with a different version of Excel so the interface will look different, but the steps are the same.

Type data into the first field, tab to the next field, and repeat until all fields are completed. Press Enter on your keyboard to save the data and move to the next record. Once you have entered data, you may want to find a record. To do so, click Criteria , enter the search term into the appropriate field e. Click Find Next. Click Find Next to scroll through the remaining records, or click Find Previous to scroll upward.

Once the desired record is displayed in the form, select the field you want to change and edit the text. Hit Enter on your keyboard to save changes. Once the desired record is displayed in the form, click Delete , then click OK. The steps for adding, finding, editing, and deleting a record are the same as for Excel , so follow the steps above. The appearance may be slightly different. You can follow the steps for adding, finding, editing, and deleting a record in Excel above.

Note that the interface may be slightly different.