Remote Data Collection allows Users to download one or multiple surveys, and the associated participant lists, so they may be administered offline. In most cases a single User will be responsible for a specific set of Participants. However, there may be times where any number of Users will have the same list of Participants. If more than one User may administer a survey, or collect data, from a specific participant there is the potential for Data Synchronization issues.
An interview started on a particular device for a specific participant should always be completed and synced from that same device. The risk of not doing so is the possibility of ending up with two sessions for the same participant on two different devices, and thus 2 data sets. When those two data sets get synced, Illume will not know which session contains the “right” data, so it will use the most recent submission as the one that is kept (thus overwriting the initial submission). If the most recent sync contains less data than the prior sync, you may end up losing some of your collected data.
The best prevention strategy is to use a procedure whereby an interviewer always completes a survey session on the same device it was initiated.