Dr. Asmita Naik Africawala is the Lead - Program Research, at Ambuja Cement Foundation. Here, she shares in detail how ACF is embracing technology to capture data in the field for internal research studies, with the aim of improving practice and approach in execution of programs.

This year, ACF introduced the practice of digital data collection for conducting internal research studies. Adopting digital data collection for research and monitoring is a significant milestone for ACF - especially considering the scale of operation at ACF. With ACF presence in 12 states, app based digital data collection is especially useful in streamlining multi-location impact studies.

Whilst some of ACF’s monitoring impacts are captured digitally, and a full-fledged digital portal to manage data for ACF’s SEDI online, making the jump to digital data for internal research has been a challenging task till date. With ACF operating at a larger scale across 12 states, the onus for data capture has been with grassroots field workers who are often new to technology. But now, with the spread of internet and smartphones, that hurdle has reduced.

The leap to digital data collection has helped ACF increase the speed of data collection, minimize errors and make more efficient use of time. The digital approach has allowed built in skip patterns in questionnaires and pop-up error check messages for field investigators, to help eliminate human error and enhance data accuracy. Going digital also means ACF is able to deploy surveys in multiple languages and monitor surveys in ‘real time’ - tracking progress of on ground data collection across locations, assessing the quality of data being collected, and facilitating corrections where required.

The process has been supported by the fact that, at ACF, there is a spirit of continuous learning and adaptation. Using field data is also at the core of our values, approach and development practice. As such, we regularly execute impact studies to gain insights about the contexts in which we operate, the quality of our programs, and capture stakeholder feedback along with overall impacts achieved, with a scope for further enriching our work.

A recently executed baseline survey using anthropometric measurements of more than 7300 children, adolescents and youth - was able to measure 92 Anganwadi Centres across 10 locations in less than the expected days using digital data. The excercise helped hone the capacity of the on-ground teams in using technology.

Post this baseline, a rapid survey to gain insights into the experiences of our field investigators and regional supervisors engaged in the digital data collection for ACF impact studies. In doing so, we learned that:

· 100% rated digital data collection as easy

· 94% shared it helped them save time of data collection and data entry

· 75% found it useful for tracking data collection progress

· 68% shared it helped them minimize errors

The move to collecting data digitally of course came with its own challenges. Despite wide use of smart phones, digital data collection was a novel experience for many field investigators. With a fear of data loss, some chose to record data digitally as well as physically. Likewise, use of real time data for quality assurance was novel for regional team managers.

Of course, this is just the first step, and going forward ACF aspires to build an internal repository of freely available digital sources to enhance our impact studies and development practice. There are many free digital tools in the market which are handy for the development sector. But when we are ‘on-ground’ it is often difficult to find time to explore and use these new tools. The team wants to make the best use of resources which are already available, rather than create something new from scratch.

Through sustained capacity building, ACF aims to streamline digital data collection and data quality monitoring processes. ACF believes, these efforts will assist in obtaining, managing and synthesizing data to better guide decision-making and our actions on ground. It is an exciting time and the team looks forward to sharing its progress and achievements in this area, in times to come.