Principal Investigators (PIs) and senior researchers often need to approve SurveyCTO forms they haven't personally built or used daily. This guide provides a quick, structured approach to ensure a form meets project objectives, protects respondents, produces clean data, and offers a user-friendly experience—all without deep-diving into the technical details or requiring SurveyCTO expertise.
Why PI’s Should Always Test Forms Before Data Collection
Testing your form involves simulating data collection to identify and correct errors before deployment. Conducting tests early and frequently during the design process helps you detect and prevent errors in navigation and logic.
Testing your form can:
- Verify that all questions and logic function as intended.
- Ensure the accuracy and reliability of collected data before data collection begins.
- Save time and resources by resolving issues early in the development process.
Below are the steps we recommend for the most thorough review of forms.
For best results, follow each step in the order they appear in this guide. If time constraints make following each step impossible, we have provided guidance on how to prioritize each one.
Testing Phase Step 1: AI Form Review
Estimated time: 1-2 hours, depending on form length and how many errors are flagged and must be corrected.
The first step we recommend in a thorough review process is to get an AI form review.
Have very limited time (less than a day) to review your form? Prioritize this section and follow the instructions to use our LLM chatbot for a thorough form review!
SurveyCTO’s AI Assistant is a custom large-language model (LLM) chatbot that appears on all pages on www.surveycto.com. Use it to quickly identify and resolve critical errors in your form design:
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Upload Your Form:
Click the paperclip icon in the Assistant window to upload your form in XLSX format. -
Request a Comprehensive Review:
Ask the Assistant to review your entire form and highlight any errors or issues it detects. -
Review and Address Feedback:
Carefully evaluate each error or suggestion flagged by the Assistant. For any flagged expressions or logic, you can request the Assistant to provide corrected or improved versions. -
Iterate and Refine:
Make the recommended changes in your form, and if needed, upload the revised version for another review to ensure all issues are resolved.
For best results, provide as much context as possible about your form’s purpose and any specific areas of concern. The more detail you share, the more targeted and helpful the Assistant’s feedback will be.
Example prompts:
“Review my uploaded XLSX form and identify any errors or issues in the design, including logic, constraints, or missing required fields.”
“Check my form for any incorrect or inefficient expressions (such as relevance, constraints, or calculations) and suggest improvements or corrections.”
“Review the skip logic and constraints for the ‘household_roster’ section in my form and let me know if there are any errors or improvements needed?”
“Review my form for any issues that could affect data quality, such as inconsistent variable naming, missing required fields, or ambiguous response options.”
“Check if my form is set up correctly for multiple languages. Are there any missing translations or potential issues with language display? Also, review the grammar and spelling of all text in each language and suggest corrections if needed.”
Testing Phase Step 2: PI Sign‑off Checklist (Using the Form's Printable Version)
Estimated time: 3-4 hours total with a thorough human review, plus a 10-minute AI review.
If you have less than a day total for all testing, you may choose to skip this section and proceed from the above Phase 1 step (AI form review) to Testing Phase Step 3 (Testing the form) below.
Next, we’ve put together a checklist of the essential items you will want to check your form for. This checklist helps you confirm that your form meets basic requirements for best practices for data collection.
First things first: A printable version of each SurveyCTO survey form can be downloaded from the server, and is a great tool for a high-level review. This export comes as an HTML file that can be opened in any web browser, or opened in Microsoft Word and saved as a Word (.docx) file, or a PDF.
The printable version of forms can include additional notes and special formatting not visible in the digital form, which can help you, the reviewer, understand the form's logic and design. See documentation on Downloading printable copies of your forms.
To quickly check all of the items on the list below in under 10 minutes, we suggest once again using the SurveyCTO AI Assistant by doing the following:
- Upload an Excel version of the form in question (or, do this phase right after Phase 1, when your form is already uploaded)
- Copy and paste the checklist below
- Ask the AI Assistant to check the form against each item in the checklist, and provide detailed feedback on any items that are not present in the form. As with all LLMs, doublecheck all answers!
To get the most benefit out of the checklist, we recommend starting with an AI review, and once you’ve addressed any errors identified there, going back through the checklist thoroughly on your own.
Now, here’s the list:
Please note: When pasting into the AI assistant, the formatting is not preserved. Still, in responding, the assistant does a fine job of formatting the output into a checklist.
A. Ethics & ID Management
Consent language is present, clear, and correctly positioned.
Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is minimized or properly protected.
(Anonymous) Unique IDs are captured or generated correctly.
B. Respondent & Enumerator Experience
Sensitive questions include an introduction, consent, or appropriate skip logic.
Questions are easy to understand, and answer choices are clear and comprehensive.
The visual presentation of questions and answers is appropriate and maximizes user experience (e.g. usage of images, choices display).
All translations (if applicable) are present and appear correct.
C. Logic & Quality control
Essential questions are present and the order of questions flows logically.
Key skip patterns are present and make sense (e.g., no livestock selected → livestock module skipped).
Critical questions have appropriate constraints (e.g., age 0–120, price ≥ 0, enforce email address format).
Required questions are genuinely necessary; optional questions are intentionally set as such.
"Other (specify)" options are limited and justified.
Testing Phase Step 3: Testing the Form
Estimated time: 4-8 hours.
While form testing should be an integral part of the form designer’s process, it is also highly recommended to have multiple other people–such as PI’s–test a form to ensure it is field-ready before it gets deployed. To that end, we have included our multiple-part Guide to Troubleshooting Your Form Design to guide PI’s through comprehensive form testing.
- Part 1: Using the Test View
- Part 2: Saving and Resuming Progress
- Part 3: Using the Form Inspector
- Part 4: Submitting Test Data
- Part 5: Using the Test View Toolbar
Additional Testing Resources
For additional guidance on testing your form design:
- Testing your forms – A detailed guide on how to use SurveyCTO’s form testing interface, including how to preview forms, toggle between test and design views, use the Form Inspector, and best practices for testing
- Form testing interface: Better surveys in less time – A video walkthrough of the form testing interface, showing how to test forms quickly and thoroughly.
- SurveyCTO Academy Online Course: Testing Your Form – A self-paced online course that guides you through the process of testing your SurveyCTO forms. Covers how to use the form testing interface, identify and resolve common issues, apply best practices for iterative testing, and ensure your forms are ready for high-quality data collection. Learn more about the SurveyCTO Academy.
No Time for Testing? Let Us Test For You! SurveyCTO offers customizable services and support to users on an Enterprise subscription plan. This broad range of services can include full form design, or thorough form testing following all phases recommended in this document for busy, high-impact teams.
Request a consultation to get the process started.
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