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OBJECTIVES: Existing electronic data capture options are often financially unfeasible in resource-poor settings or difficult to support technically in the field. To help facilitate large-scale multicenter studies in sub-Saharan Africa, the African Partnership for Chronic Disease Research (APCDR) has developed an open-source electronic questionnaire (EQ). STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: To assess its relative validity, we compared the EQ against traditional pen-and-paper methods using 200 randomized interviews conducted in an ongoing type 2 diabetes case-control study in South Africa. RESULTS: During its 3-month validation, the EQ had a lower frequency of errors (EQ, 0.17 errors per 100 questions; paper, 0.73 errors per 100 questions; P-value ≤0.001), and a lower monetary cost per correctly entered question, compared with the pen-and-paper method. We found no marked difference in the average duration of the interview between methods (EQ, 5.4 minutes; paper, 5.6 minutes). CONCLUSION: This validation study suggests that the EQ may offer increased accuracy, similar interview duration, and increased cost-effectiveness compared with paper-based data collection methods. The APCDR EQ software is freely available (https://github.com/apcdr/questionnaire).

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Copyright of Cahiers d'Études Africaines is the property of Editions EHESS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper reflects on conferences of the first five years of the International Academy of African Business and Development (IAABD: 2000-2004) focusing specifically on the conference proceedings. The papers presented at the five conferences and published in their proceedings were reviewed and analysed in terms of functional areas covered, the research methodologies employed, as well as the geographical spread and country focus of the authors. The analysis demonstrates a number of significant achievements for IAABD and identifies a number of challenges for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]