How does one create a paper form/survey that can be scanned and mapped to separate data sets?

March 23, 2011 8:23 PM

How does one create a paper form/survey that can be scanned and have the info mapped to separate data sets?

I am working with a non-profit devoted to improving education at the university level, and we would like to create a standardized paper form for peer mentors to periodically (1) record there hours with a given student and (2) score the student across various dimensions. My organization would then like to be able to scan this paper document and have the various data be imported to it's respective, separate databases (i.e. have the mentor's hours with student X be logged into that mentors time sheet, and to have the student's various scores stored in a separate database specific to him/her devoted to measuring trends in that person's scores longitudinally (over time). We would also want a pdf copy of the document attached to the student's account for reference.

It sounds like a complicated task, but such a system would greatly streamline the process recording the data in digital form and making it available to researchers.

posted by lukeklein to computers & internet (4 answers total)

Having done quite a bit of university-level education, mentoring, etc, I wonder why you can't just make an online form to do the exact same thing. Google forms would work nicely.

Otherwise, you will need some type of scantron, and access to a scantron reader.

It will drastically increase your compliance rate as well.
posted by rockindata at 9:55 PM on March 23, 2011

If you don't want to go the online route, create forms in PDF, which the student can then fill and submit via email - easy to print out as well as extract data into a database.

But this would be much more complex than the online route, though (especially when you need responses captured in a computer database).
posted by theobserver at 10:50 PM on March 23, 2011

If you absolutely need to do paper forms, check out something like ReMark.
posted by expialidocious at 7:58 AM on March 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

OMR! THAT's the term I was looking for, and oh my goodness ReMark exports to SPSS?!? THANK you, expialidocious, that is just the thing I needed!
posted by lukeklein at 3:15 PM on March 24, 2011