Survey builder

Why build survey forms on Nature Counts?

Inputting biological records is useful and has the 4 key pieces of information:

• What

• Where

• When

• Who (who recorded it)

See Records for more info

However, often we do an ecological survey on Nature Reserves (or elsewhere) we are also capturing other information such as the state or behaviour of different organisms, or what weather conditions it was, or maybe we're working from a set species list. Just take a look at these examples:

Examples of survey forms

Introducing... 🥁  the survey builder

We could extract the biological records from these surveys and upload them to Nature Counts through the casual records, or list of records page, but we'd lose load of valuable extra information that is collected in the survey form. The solution to this challenge was the development of the Nature Counts Survey Builder.

The survey builder can create custom survey forms which can capture all the relevant extra information in each survey.

Here are some examples from across the Nature Counts Network:

Using the survey builder on Nature Counts

Setting up surveys on Nature Counts into 5 key steps.

1. Write protocols

Firstly, write a detailed description of the survey so that it's clear how the survey was completed. You can find the help page on this here: Survey Protocols 

2. Produce species lists (if needed)

If your survey uses a tick list of species to check off then you'll need to 

3. Build survey form templates (optional)

If you're going to be making many similar surveys derived from the same template then you can crate a survey form as a template

4. Derive survey forms from templates, or make survey forms without templates

This is where you make the final survey forms of three types

• Single record survey form: Single record survey forms 

• Multiple record (on the same date) survey forms: Multiple record survey forms 

• Multiple records in multiple places (on the same date) survey form: 

5. Add survey forms to activities (optional)

You can also attach particular survey forms to activities. See Creating/editing activities 

Note: It is possible to  copy templates from one Nature Counts site to another

For example if Yorkshire WT built a bird survey form and Sheffield and Rotherham WT wanted to use it then there is a way to copy it across websites. It's possible, Simon can do it using the BRC warehouse.