How to read "notes" collected during fieldwork

[sjonabro]

Hi everyone,

My team is currently out in the field collecting data, as the surveys begin to sync to dropbox I have been looking for the fielld notes that enumerators may be making in their tablets.
I am not sure exactly how to read them, I have used the "text viewer" tool in CSpro to open the .dat.not files... When I do that I get all my ID variables listed in different columns, and a column with other variable names listed. But I do not see any user entered field notes.
Where should I try to access them?

Thanks!
Aniseh

[josh]

Check out the help page that describes the format of the notes file (the .dat.not file). The notes will be in that file. You can view it in any text viewer. You may need to scroll all the way to the right to see the notes.

[Saint]

It is also possible to create a dictionary to read the content into your preferred data analysis program. I have done this in the past and it has been useful for data cleaning. You need to understand the structure of the notes. It comprises of the record type, case id, variable name, line number and the actual notes. With this information, you can create the dictionary and convert the file.