Share data with other observers

Observations are often made by several people – in a municipality, at a school, in a network or in a research project. You then often need to see everyone's observations together: follow progress across classrooms, compare baseline and follow-up measurements, or compile results for a whole organisation. Instead of emailing files to each other, you can collect the observations in one place.

With FOCUS you do this in a shared Google spreadsheet. Each observation you choose to send becomes a row in the sheet – nothing is sent unless you choose it. Whoever creates the spreadsheet owns it and decides who can see it.

How it works

One person creates the spreadsheet. In FOCUS: Settings → Google Sheets → Create a new sheet. Sign in with the Google account that should own the sheet. The sheet is created in your Google Drive and can be moved to any folder afterwards.
Share the spreadsheet with the other observers as Editors, using the Share button in Google Sheets.
The others connect. In FOCUS: Settings → Google Sheets → Connect to an existing sheet. They scan the QR code – it is in the spreadsheet's Instructions tab and under Invite observers in the app – or paste the sheet's address.
Send observations. Tap Export in an observation – or Export data in Observations to choose several – and choose Google Sheets. Without a connection they wait on the phone and are sent later. If the same observation is sent again, its row is updated rather than duplicated.

Want the sheet in a particular folder? Create an empty spreadsheet in that folder in Google Drive, then choose Connect to an existing sheet in FOCUS. The app sets up the tabs and the QR code for you.

What the spreadsheet contains

The spreadsheet has three tabs:

Instructions – instructions and a QR code for connecting.
Data – one row per observation: time, series ID, municipality, observer, school, subject, grade, class, number of students, notes, measurement point and all results. For co-observations also the agreement between observers.
Codebook – what each column means and how it is calculated.

The teacher's name is never sent. The series ID links baseline and follow-up of the same teacher and class without names.

Good to know

Do not change the column headers in the Data tab – the app finds the columns by their names. Your own tabs, charts and columns at the far right are fine.
New versions of the app may add columns. They are always added at the end, so existing formulas and charts keep working.
Each observer needs a Google account. It can be created with a work email address; it does not have to be Gmail.
If your organisation uses Google Workspace, the administrator may need to approve FOCUS before observers can sign in.
Whoever owns the spreadsheet, for example a municipality or school, is the data controller for its content.

Codebook

The codebook explains every column in the export files and the spreadsheet, with the names in Swedish, English and Norwegian.

Download the codebook (CSV)