How to collect same data from different number of schools with different number of teachers without using the repeat_count (or without a loop)

I want to collect teacher information from schools in one district. The schools do not have a uniform number of teachers per each school. For example, the number of teachers per a typical primary school may range from 11 to 13, JHS range from 9 to 11. But some of these schools have double streams where these numbers could sometimes double up, and you may have say 16 teachers for a JHS. Now in the form design, I want to do away with <repeat_count> where the same set of questions will be repeated for each teacher in the school. How do I create the form in such a way that if you have 11 teachers, those sets of questions will be repeated for each teacher and same way for a school with 5 teachers?

Can you please say more about why you'd prefer not to use repeats? That would help steer you in the right direction.

One option is to "unroll" the loop by having the same question block multiple times and asking at the end of each block whether the enumerator has more teachers to enter. If the enumerator answers yes, later blocks can be made relevant. If not, they are never displayed to the enumerator. You can see an example of this at the bottom of this COVID-19 case report form. In that context, the same questions are asked for 3 travel destinations and later for 5 contacts. The form is designed this way so that it can more easily match the reporting requirements.

You can find this tip and others in the repeats section of the documentation.

On the issue of why I don't want to use repeats, I did a trial version with the repeats using Google Drive as the server, when I pulled the data submitted, I realized some of the data had no school names when visualized on Power BI Desktop. Though it created a second sheet for me containing all the repeats and I connected the two files using their KEY. Going forward I don't want to experience some data missing key element like the name of the school where the teachers belong. So, I was thinking if possible I should do away with the repeats.

Hi @Emmanuel_Inkoom,

To add on what @LN has proposed, the repeats will surely easy your task, unless you want to create repeating blocks of questions. With repeats every child entry has a parent. In your case for the two sheets did you find any data row without a "KEY"? Or child key that couldn't be linked to the parent? If so please share the form for further investigation of what can cause that. If not i would advice you to check properly how you did linking of the two tables, and the relationship that you are using.

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Thanks very much. I really appreciate your suggestions and will work on it and get back to you.

Best,

Inkoom