I've been a great fan of Martin Yan since 1985 or 86 when I
was lucky enough to get a chance to visit the U.S. and watched his TV program
"Yan Can Cook". Then there was a lapse for a decade or so when I
returned home. After that I was again able to watch him at Marshall Islands in
the Pacific for a year or two. Now, I am not sure if I have watched his old or
new programs on this side of the new millennium. Anyway, not so long ago I was
suddenly nudged by this curiosity to know if the familiar Yan accent is for
real or not. I looked that up on the Web. Well, for now I'll leave it to you to
find out what I found, or to guess it. That's up to you.
In one of Yan's program, I was really amazed watching him
separate meat from bone and cut up a whole chicken in a snap, just with his big
chopper. In another one he showed how to slice onions really fast with this big
chopper again. Anyone would have been scared stiff with the idea of slicing
onions with a big, heavy, and razor sharp chopper, but in reality the big broad
blade itself is the key to superfast slicing while keeping your fingers safe!
Then, after watching so much of Yan, did I learn to cook or
slice vegetables with a chopper like him? No, simply because there is someone
with me all the time to handle genuine Myanmar day-to-day cuisine really well,
or not so. Anyway, if I try to emulate Yan would I do well? Honestly, I don't
think so. Yet, I did pick up Yan's philosophy for good: If Yan can cook, so can you.
With these words of Yan's encouragement I tried recently to
start learning about creating data collection applications with mobile phones.
Among the different software options available, I picked CSEntry because I know a bit of CSPro
the mother software of which CSEntry
is the data entry module. With CSPro
you could develop data entry application for Windows platform or for Android.
The idea is to develop and test the CAPI (computer assisted
personal interviewing) application with CSPro
software that is running on a Windows computer. For Android phone data
collection you need to develop the CSEntry
application with the CSPro software
version 6.1. Then you would do most of the testing on the Windows machine and
finalize the application going back and forth between your desktop and the
phone.
After that you compile the data entry application on the
Windows machine to get the pen file
(say xxx.pen). When you test runs the pen
file on the Windows machine, you will get a pff
file (say xxx.pff). These two files are all you need to run a data collection application
on your Android phone or tablet. Of course you need have the CSEntry program for Android installed on
the phone or tablet in the first place.
□
The required CSPro
6.1 software and manuals could be downloaded from the U.S. Bureau of Census
website here.
□
CSEntry
for Android could be downloaded to your phone from the Google Play Store.
□
Visit the CSPro Users
website for goodies on CSPro and CSEntry for Android.
This is how I worked. To make head or tail out of a CAPI application, I played with the "simpleCAPI" application that comes
with CSEntry for Android. After
graduating from it, I worked through data entry application in the "Examples\CAPI" folder installed
with the CSPro 6.1 program on my PC (I was lucky to have some experience
working on regular data entry applications on the PC). Then I tried developing
a PVT CAPI data entry application for Android on my own. Here, as I have already
been posting about parallel vote tabulation on my Bayanathi blog, I felt that a
PVT data collection application would not be too hard to do.
As the idea for the exercise is to get a working model for
PVT mobile data collection and not much more, I based my application content
almost entirely on the PVT sample
observer forms given in pages 89 – 90 of the handbook for quick count/PVT
by NDI (The Quick
Count and Election Observation: An NDI Handbook for Civic Organizations and
Political Parties, Estock, Nevitte, and Cowan, 2002).
Here are some screen shots of my PVT_1 application on Android phone.
Working on an Android CSEntry
application gives you some refreshing experience you don't get with the desktop
application. The checkbox for inputting multiple answers to a single question
as in the screen shots above is a beautiful example. Below you can see how it
worked the same as using paper questionnaires, but greatly more convenient
because it could give you instantly the data you have previously entered that
you want to look up.
In the first screen on the left of
the screen shots above, the question was "Which parties contested the
vote counting results?" For an earlier question, the list of political
parties present at vote counting has already been entered. The program
performed a check on answers to these two questions and returned the message
shown in the middle screen shot. Now tapping the CSEntry logo on top-left corner of the screen brings up the list of
all questions and answers entered (known as the Case Tree) and there you can
find the previous answer. Then you can correct either or both of the answers as
necessary.
If you want to try out my
application follow these steps:
- Install CSEntry on your Android phone/tablet.
- By doing so you will also get the application "Simple CAPI" installed in the folder "csentry" on the SD card.
- Download
pen
file from this link: PVT_capi.pen.
- Download
pff
file from this link: PVT_capi.pff.
- If
you've opened my blog post with your Android phone/tablet, both files will
normally be stored in the "Download" folder. Cut and paste them
into your "csentry" folder on your Android phone/tablet. Now, if
you run CSEntry on your phone/tablet you will see my application "PVT_1". Tap on it and you are on your way to Start New Case and enter data.
I have created this application for fun (and may be some
use).
I don't know if it works perfectly or not. I simply don't
have the expertise to guarantee anything. Learn CSPro and try to do things on your own, or pick the software of
your choice from among other free/open source software available for mobile
data-collection application development.
Now it's my turn to say: If
Bayanathi can do it, so can you.
