Help: possible to use the same tracked entity in more than one tracker program

Support - Assistance technique
1

Hi, everyone.

I have the form below for group of girls/sessions groups. This is one of the four forms I have to design in DHIS 2. The other three forms only differ from this in the number of sessions.

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Form 1: Group of girls, number of sessions: 13, 10 -11 age group

Form 2: Form 1: Group of boys, number of sessions: 11, 10 -11 age group

Form 3: Group of girls, number of sessions: 7, 12 -15 age group

Form 4: Form 1: Group of boys, number of sessions: 7, 12 -15 age group

Iam interested in knowing how many sessions an individual has attended. So, I have participant as a tracked entity with a repeatable stage to capture all the different sessions they attend.

Program definition/ tracker capture

Tracked entity: participant

Attributes: participant’s name, participant’s age

Program stage: group of girls – 10-11

Data elements: session date, number of sessions

For indicators, I would like to know how many participants aged 10 attended all 13 sessions, how many participants aged 11 attended all 13 sessions.

My two questions are:

  • Can I use the same tracked entity (participant) for the four forms? Should each form have its own data elements (form 3 and 4 have the same data elements – session date and the same number of sessions)
  • Is the way I think of designing the tracker capture correct with regards to analytics

This is my first experience with this kind of forms,

2

Hello,
We are doing something similar, using tracker programs to follow clients through multiple community based encounters. Others with more experience could probably give more details on the data element question. Sounds like you are doing it exactly right. You want to know everything that one participant has experienced. So if it’s the same person, should be one tracked entity with either multiple stages or multiple program enrollments. I’m not sure I’m following the different groups, but I think you could either:

  1. do a repeatable stage for participation in any type of session, and then have data elements in that one stage for the facilitator to check off which type of group it is (age group, sex group, and/or session number if necessary). You could have an event (stage) per session, or you could simply capture the data at the end of all the sessions and have a zero or positive integer for how many sessions the person attended. That decision depends on whether the facilitators are collecting data electronically after each session, or tracking on paper and then entering the data at the end. Also if you need to know WHICH sessions they completed on which date.
  2. Have a 10-11 tracker program and a 12-15 program for the different forms. You could enroll the TEIs first in the girls or boys 10-11 tracker program, and if they progress to the 12-15 program, add that enrollment.

Ideally, you would take an approach as simple as possible that would allow you do to the analysis you need. So for example, if you know for sure that all you need to know is how many participants attended ALL sessions, you could simply have a check box (did the participant attend all sessions), which makes your indicators very easy. But you may, later, want to know exactly how many sessions were attended by those who didn’t attend all. In that case, you could have one stage for the entire program asking how many sessions they attended, or a stage for each session. Probably other approaches as well.

Note this discussion on event programs for sessions vs tracker programs for attendance and the desire to link those somehow: Training register design question

3

Hi @Natalie_Tibbels

Hope you are well.
I was sick with a cold, so I was away for some days

With regard to my post and your explanation, I am clarifying what I may have missed out.

  1. The four forms are independent of each other, i.e., participants attending sessions in form 1 are not the same as participants attending sessions in form 2 and so on. In this situation, how should I should configure the tracked entity? Should I, for example, create four 4 tracked entities: Partcipant_form1, Partcipant_form2, Partcipant_form3 and Partcipant_form4; each TE for each form?

  2. Facilitators are collecting data on paper and then entering the data electronically for each participant at the end.

  3. For participants who did not attend all sessions, I need to know, for example, how many participants attended at least, 5,6 or 7 sessions.

  4. The main indicators would be:

a) How many female/male participants aged 10 attended all 13 sessions,
b) How many female/male participants aged 11 attended all 13 sessions.
c) How many participants attended, for example, at least, 5,6 or 7 sessions. (this not mentioned in the previous post)

  1. I do not know if point 4C is likely the same your explanation “But you may, later, want to know exactly how many sessions were attended by those who didn’t attend all. In that case, you could have one stage for the entire program asking how many sessions they attended, or a stage for each session.” – I didn’t understand this part.

  2. Should sex group and age be part of a stage or tracked entity, looking at your explanation in point 1?

I am looking to more hints/ explanation.

Thanks in advance

4

Hope you’re feeling better!
It sounds to me like you should create one tracked entity type, “person” (or “participant”). Create tracked entity attributes, name (if it’s necessary to put names in your system, otherwise you could use an identifying code), age, sex, school name, and any other characteristics you need to know about the client. You can use this tracked entity type and assign the same attributes for all the programs. A tracked entity is one person. You would enroll each participant in the right program. It sounds like you want each form to be a different tracker program, if the 4 forms are really 4 completely separate experiences. (there are even other ways you could do this - a different program stage for each type of form, but that could lead to data entry errors, or just one stage for all the forms but you have a data element that asks which type of group/form it is - but then all indicators need to be filtered with that data element)

A repeatable stage is probably the way to go if you need to know the date that each client attended each session (you should include a compulsory data element to ask which session number it is, if it’s a repeatable stage). If you don’t need to know the date the client attended, you can just have one non-repeatable stage they fill out at the end that asks the total number of sessions attended. That’s less data for you but also less of a burden on the facilitator to add 13 stages per participant, and less of a pain setting up the indicators. Again, it really comes down to whether you need to know the date they attended each session and which session numbers.

You probably know this already, but setting it up as a tracker program will not easily allow you to calculate the number of GROUPS. If you want to know the number of participants by age and sex and total sessions attended, this would work well. But if you are later asked how many groups were facilitated, the tracker program counts individuals, not groups.

Hope I’m not confusing things more for you and welcome other opinions about how to configure this. Those of us using DHIS2 to monitor community group-based interventions should have a support group!

5

Hi @Natalie_Tibbels,

I very much appreciate your help with this task. I will walk through your steps and say something in case I get stuck.

Thank you very much

6

Hi @Natalie_Tibbels

I have a taken the Repeatable Program stage approach. Below is how I configured the Tracker Capture.

Tracked entity – Participant

Tracked entity attributes

First Name

Last Name

Participant’s age

Gender

School name

Teacher’s name

Program stage – Session Groups_Girls 10-11 – Repeatable Stage

Data elements

Session Date

Session completed (positive integer value type Option set attached to DE with options ranging from 1 to 13)

Referred to (Text value type Option set attached to DE is with the following options: Health facility, Police Station)

Following this approach, Iam able to create program indicators that count the number of participants that participated in each session. By making the following program indicator, I count the No. of participants in session 1.

Analytics Type: Event

Aggregation type: Count

Expression: Enrollment count

Filter: session completed == 1

However, Iam unable to create an indicator that counts number of participants that attended all 13 sessions or the number of participants that attended for example at least 4 sessions.

When filling a program stage, the event date of a program stage assumes the date selected form the report date, so what is the relevance of session date that I have created, as this is that date that session took place. Wouldn’t this produce redundancy? What would be the implications of the date configuration in the analytics. The below below on Sierra Leone Demo shows how the tracker was configured.

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7

Hi! It doesn’t seem to me that you would need the session date. You would rename the report date as the session date.
I am also interested in how to create program indicators that count repeatable stages - see this discussion: Find patients with Follow-up - #2 by Natalie_Tibbels
Maybe the @dhis2-tracker team can help us!
~Natalie

8

Thank you very much, Natalie. Also looking forward to @dhis2-tracker team helping us.