I'm currently running a fairly complex case management project using CommCare. We are utilizing features such as Case Managemnt, Case Sharing, Sub Cases, as well as a few others to collect data on job seekers and potential firms and job openings.
As a part of this project I am working with a few econometrics PhDs who utilize STATA a fairly powerful statistical analysis software comparable to R as well as ODK to perform various analysis upon our dataset for a paper.
They've spoken about having issues with how CommCare exports it's data since it doesn't follow XLSForm and can't export as an ODK Briefcase format. Has anyone here had experience with exporting data to be used within software like STATA or potential similar software that is a bit more fully featured than Power BI?
I'm trying to find a good compromise where we can utilize the many useful features of CommCare that makes it unique while also having our research team be able to analyze the data exported by CommCare.
There are several options for getting data out of CommCare. This wiki is a good index of them. In particular, the Data Export Tool lets you pull data from CommCare into an excel spreadsheet or directly to a SQL database. There is also direct API access, although you'd probably be better off with a a local copy maintained via the Data Export Tool.
Thanks for the answer! Have you ever tried feeding the data generated by the Data Export Tool into STATA? I've used the tool for some personal small analysis but I've been getting pushback from our economists about the format of the export. If it's possible to feed it into STATA or a similar tool, I'd be happy to push back and have them figure it out but given my lack of experience with statistical analysis tools, I'm not quite comfortable doing that and hope that someone could confirm that it's possible.
I have not used STATA before, so I don't have experience working with SQL or Excel data, although the STATA website does state that it can import data from either.