The ConSoSci Partnership is a group of conservation NGOs, researchers, and social science practitioners who came together to address critical gaps in the capacity, implementation, and accessibility of the social sciences in conservation. ConSoSci's membership includes some of the leading international conservation NGOs with long-standing field conservation projects, including experience and expertise in social sciences.
ConSoSci’s mission is to promote, facilitate, and coordinate the use of effective and ethical social science best practices from research design to data collection, analysis, and interpretation to inform conservation decision-making.
ConSoSci envisions a world where nature and people thrive together, enabled by a deep understanding of the relationship between people, their well-being, and the environment.
The Conservation Social Science Partnership came about when the work of two different groups collided. One group was working in Central Africa with funds from the European Union and USAID and was exploring the use of electronic collection and cloud curation of social science data. The other, with the support of Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, sought ways to help conservation practitioners make greater use of social science evidence to inform their conservation decisions. We concluded that we needed a partnership to share our lessons learned, leverage our diverse expertise, avoid duplicating our efforts and collectively push the field application of the conservation social sciences into the 21st century.
ConSoSci Partnership fills a unique role within the broader conservation social science community in that:
We are deeply committed to the field application of the social sciences in remote, frequently under-resourced areas. We help conservation practitioners with limited education in the social sciences learn about and how to use the social sciences in their work and thus bring them into the discipline.
We focus on developing and making public a technology toolkit to help conservation practitioners gather, curate, analyze and use social science information effectively to inform conservation decisions and actions.
To join the partnership, go to the https://consosci.org website and click the “Join” button at the top right. You can become a ConSoSci member or simply subscribe to the ConSoSci newsletter and email updates. You’ll then hear from us for your onboarding into the partnership!
You can support the ConSoSci by becoming a member and providing your in-kind expertise. You can also support through other in-kind (such as dissemination of material, sharing of innovative tools and protocols, communication products, infographics, etc) or cash contributions, all support is welcome. For all contributions and membership, please contact info@consosci.org.
Contact info@consosci.org if you have any questions or suggestions.
At ConSoSci, we firmly believe that finding effective and sustainable conservation solutions hinges on understanding people, their attitudes, and their behaviors. Therefore, research and management must incorporate both social and ecological dimensions to secure our shared future.
Besides the ConSoSci website, valuable resources can be consulted on the Conservation Measures Partnership website, the Conservation Evidence website and the Youtube channel for the Cambridge Conservation Initiative on “Delivering the effectiveness revolution in conservation”.
The most important aspect is when identifying the objectives of your project, you map out what factors (negative or positive) will influence whether you’ll be able to achieve these, whether ecological, social or of another nature. This should give you a comprehensive mapping of the array of factors influencing the issues you hope to address. From there, you may apply criteria to decide which of these factors you aim to tackle, based on factors such as tractability, urgency & scale. Social science should inform such an assessment, and should ideally be repeated to update the situational mapping of factors at play in your project.
Subsequently, you can monitor the impact of your programs in addressing the listed factors. This requires that your programs have a specific theory of change, which should include any social changes one hypothesizes to see or hopes to affect. Social science can help determine whether these changes happened, and which actions deserve to be scaled up, should be stopped, or whether other actions should be prioritized. The lessons from your studies can furthermore help you understand why these interventions did or did not work, which will help inform strategic planning at future stages.
Attending/listening to webinars on the relevant topics (socio-cultural and psychological frameworks) can provide a gentle way to learn about these topics. After getting a basic overview, you can then dive deeper by reading textbooks on socio-cultural and psychological frameworks in conservation. Who cares about wildlife by Michael J. Manfredo comes to mind as an early read about the topic.
On the ConSoSci website, you can explore information about ConSoSci’s Partnership mission, vision, goals and strategies and explore a suite of useful tools and training resources to help you use the social sciences in your conservation work. All the resources available on the ConSoSci website are free to use.
Some of the resources available include:
A searchable training library of more than 400 high-quality, free or low-cost training resources on the social sciences;
A form library of field-tested, social science survey forms for conducting social science research that you can adapt for your own surveys;
Technical manuals on how to use KoboToolbox;
A research design reflections worksheet on what to think about when deciding on what social science methods and tools to use
Guidance on conducting ethical research, including
an introduction to ethical concepts;
tools to design ethical research;
and a decision tree to help you navigate a research ethics process and resources.
Practical guidance and tools for community-level natural resource governance, developed by the SNAPP Natural Resource Governance Working Group.
The ConSoSci Youtube Channel also provides more videos on how to use social science methods and tools.
Training resources are available on the ConSoSci website's Training Library and the ConSoSci YouTube channel. You can also find Technical Manuals developed by ConSoSci on our website.
The ConSoSci Partnership does not offer any live training at the moment, but recordings of virtual training sessions are available on the ConSoSci Youtube Channel.
Collecting data using pen and paper and manually entering it into Excel or Access is highly time-consuming for field teams and introduces the potential for numerous errors due to poor handwriting and misreading. Digital data collection tools like KoboToolbox or Survey123 help save time and resources, but can also help improve the quality of the data collected thanks to data validation processes that can be included directly in the data entry forms. Data management and analysis processes can also be streamlined by standardizing forms and setting up data integration workflows that allow storing and analyzing large amounts of data.
Using digital devices for social science research should, however, be well planned in advance to prepare for practical constraints that may arise in remote environments, such as connectivity issues, power supply, and low digital literacy. Teams should plan for upfront costs when transitioning from paper to digital data collection tools, including investments in equipment, training requirements, and maintenance costs. It is also important to back up the data outside of the initial data collection platform, in case the original data platform breaks or you lose access.
Training and a lot of practice are key! It is crucial to conduct field trials during your survey design process. You will always run into scenarios or interpretations that you haven't considered before. From then, you can design your survey form so that you have a few checks and safeguards in place. An example is to include check boxes in your form, to help guide enumerators (e.g. enumerators actively need to click on “yes” to “Have you told the participant about free, prior and informed consent?”).
Collecting social data can be costly, complex and time consuming, with time often being the primary constraint. To save on time, consider using pre-existing survey instruments rather than recreating surveys from scratch. Carefully research to check if the social data you wish to collect has already been collected by other projects for the same population. Look at collaboration opportunities with other organisations working in the same area. Remember that in addition to being time consuming, collecting data from the same population can result in survey fatigue from the respondents, which can affect the quality of data. Using rigorously gathered secondary data can provide as useful information as primary data while saving time. In this case, using good quality secondary data from previous projects or other organizations/academic institutions could be more valuable than low quality primary data.
To balance depth and breadth in the data collection process, ensure that you have defined clear research questions you want to answer with the data, so that when you collect the data, you know exactly what questions they will answer and the type of questions to use - e.g. open vs close-ended questions, surveys or interviews (the latter collecting more in-depth qualitative data). This clarity will enable you to avoid asking respondents irrelevant questions and focus on the important questions (thus prioritizing depth over breadth). Don’t gather data with the assumption that ‘you might need it someday’ - it’s unethical and the data might not be sufficient for when you need it, requiring you to collect the data again, thereby consuming time and generating survey fatigue.
The transition can be done progressively. One way to do it could be to pilot your survey on paper and electronic devices simultaneously, or to start the transition by collecting the data on paper and then entering it into KoboToolbox or Survey123 instead of Excel. Your team should also manage expectations. Some people might perceive the use of electronic devices by the research team as a sign of wealth, and might expect financial or material compensation for participation. This (i.e. what participants can expect from taking part in the survey) should be addressed very early on, for example, when you introduce the survey to participants.
Remember that there might be technical challenges. Your electronic devices might run out of battery, might not be waterproof, and/or can break if not treated with care. You should plan your fieldwork accordingly: identify sources of power that can be used to recharge devices in the field and/or purchase external power banks, take paper surveys with you as a back-up, purchase waterproof devices if possible, purchase or make protective cases for devices, and ensure data collectors are well trained in handling the devices and taking care of them. Note that in some circumstances it might still be better to use paper surveys - this is something research teams need to decide.
Establishing trust with local communities before undertaking social science research is key to ensuring the surveys go well and results are trustworthy and reflect reality. This requires researchers to:
Build relationships by allocating sufficient time to engage informally with community members before jumping into survey planning;
Meet with community leaders to introduce the research project prior to conducting surveys;
Be transparent about the research goals, the purpose of the survey, how the data will be used, and how it will affect the community;
Design and conduct the surveys in ways that are respectful of local customs and social norms (language, survey tools, timing of surveys, gender considerations, etc.);
Follow research ethics protocols to ensure all ethical considerations for your research are taken into account (you can learn more about research ethics protocols on the ConSoSci website);
Follow-up and keep community members informed of the research results, outputs and next steps.
This participatory action research toolkit provides practical and useful suggestions: https://research.reading.ac.uk/community-based-research/wp-content/uploads/sites/114/2023/06/PAR-Toolkit-v10.pdf
Explore additional resources about building partnerships, building trust, and stakeholder engagement from our Training Resource Library.
Survey bias is a significant factor that should be taken into account whenever collecting social data. It can become especially pronounced when surveys address sensitive topics or questions where respondents may favor socially acceptable responses.
Without going in depth on how to address various potential biases in social science data collection, there are a number of important factors to consider:
Identify all potential sources of bias that may affect your results or your data during the research design stage, and try to find a solution for addressing or at least mitigating them as much as possible. For example if your enumerators are particularly linked to/involved in a given survey topic, research participants might not respond truthfully if they think their responses will be perceived negatively by the enumerators who are interviewing them. In this case, bring in a third party (e.g. local university students) to make sure your enumerators are neutral/outside of the survey topic if it is sensitive.
Build trust before conducting surveys, by communicating clearly how the data will be treated (anonymously, confidentially) and what it would be used for;
Establish trust and transparency between the data collector and respondent before starting any survey;
Consider ways to mitigate against the bias during the survey, such as allowing the respondent to submit responses to sensitive questions (e.g. their income over the past 3 months) on the device without the data collector having to see it;
Apply caution when interpreting the results, some form of bias will always be present, but hopefully be fairly consistent over time, allowing trend comparison.
To learn more about addressing survey bias, we recommend the following resources:
Designing and Running Randomized Evaluations: an online course to learn practical skills for running randomized evaluations to measure the impact of social programs.
Doing evaluation in service of racial equity: a three-part series of practice guides & toolkit that show how to incorporate racial equity as a core value into evaluation.
Implementing the Ballot Box Method to reduce social desirability bias when researching sensitive behaviours in conservation: Guidance on the design and implementation of the Ballot Box Method for indirect questioning on sensitive issues in conservation.
Both tools have advantages and disadvantages. The best way to choose is to first check what your organization is using and what your needs are.
The main advantage of tools like KoboToolbox and Survey123 is that data can be collected offline as well as online. They were built to meet the needs of remote field work for data collection for humanitarian or conservation initiatives.
KoboToolbox and Survey123 have similar functionalities, and you can learn more about them by watching the recording of the ‘Social Science Data Collection and Management at Scale’ webinar that ConSoSci organized in February 2025.
KoboToolbox has a free plan that allows a liberal amount of survey submissions & data storage for most organizations. Survey123 is a paid service by ESRI, although in-kind grants are available for non-profit organizations, rendering the tool free of cost to many conservation NGOs who use it.
Both tools are relatively easy to adopt, with an important benefit being that they both use XLS-based survey designs, meaning surveys designed in one platform or published on the ConSoSci website can easily be translated over to the other. A guide on how to do so will be available shortly on the ConSoSci website.
ESRI offers nice tools such as dashboards & webmaps from which the data collected can be visualized fairly easily, and which can be integrated into PowerBI via plugins. With KoboToolbox, basic data analyses and dashboards are integrated into the platform. Users can also use data integration tools such as OpenFn to transfer the data from KoboToolbox to any online database.
The table below highlights key differences between KoboToolbox and Survey 123:
To edit forms, yes, one needs an account. One approach is to create "data collector accounts" for teams working with communities.
It is true that Survey123 may slow down when you start adding a lot of different questions and "rules" for what questions need to be displayed depending on earlier answers. However, this has improved quite a bit in the last few months. With the recent improvements, most surveys should not be long enough to create any significant delay. Another way around this issue would be to design your survey(s) in the XLS format (Survey123 Connect).
For KoboToolbox, we have not heard about issues of questions from long surveys being slow to be displayed.
Both tools allow you to add visuals to the survey forms.
When you design your surveys using these tools, you can include any question in your survey form, so then it's simply up to you at the analysis stage to decide how you're going to analyze responses from open-ended questions, for example, that require qualitative data analysis skills. It is exactly like analyzing data collected with paper surveys. You have to think about how you will analyze the data depending on what kind of data it is.
The great thing about electronic datasets and data collection is that you can get any type of data: numerical, text, visual (e.g. photographs, videos), audio, etc. All this can be done on a handheld device within KoboToolbox or Survey123.
New questions and new response options can be added to the template survey you use. If people want those new questions/options to be transferred to the database, then the data integration script needs to be updated accordingly.
Sharing the survey is done manually for every survey - the owner of the Kobo form is responsible for doing that.
Digital data collection tools, like any other element of your social science research protocol, are subject to approval by an internal review board whose role is to assess whether your research plan follows research ethics standards. While digital data collection tools do not have internal review boards or processes in themselves, research teams should go through the internal review process of their own organization if it exists, or through partner organizations.
You can use ConSoSci’s Ethical Review Decision Tree tool to help you navigate available resources and understand what steps should be taken to go through the ethical review of a research project.
It is important to first complete research ethics protocols to make sure your research includes steps for dealing with informed consent, confidentiality and anonymity. As much as possible, avoid collecting personally identifiable information if it’s not necessary (e.g. people’s names, home location, etc.). If collecting personally identifiable information is necessary, store that data separately from the rest of the survey data, and define how these data can be accessed and by whom.
Think about how the survey results you will present after you’ve analyzed the data might affect the people about whom you’ve collected data, and have measures in place to ensure no harm or unintended consequences might arise from your research.
You can learn more about research ethics protocols on the ConSoSci website. We will soon also add some guidance on handling Personally Identifiable Information.
The data collected with KoboToolbox or Survey123 are stored within the online servers of those platforms, and are accessible to anyone who has access to the username and password to connect to the account on which the data are stored. The research team will define who can access the data. Both tools also offer role-based permissions so that users can be restricted to specific access types. You can learn more about privacy and security measures on both tools on the following pages:
KoboToolbox Privacy Policy
Kobotoolbox Data Security Measures
Survey123 Security
For ethical compliance, check out the Research Ethics resources available on the ConSoSci website.
This will depend on the local context and customs, and how the people surveyed usually share and receive information. Village presentations are usually appreciated, and can be fun to organize. Sometimes ‘bigger’ events with local representatives can be necessary. It really depends on what information you’ve collected and are looking to give back, who your research participants are, and what your research goals are.
It is good practice to give people a point of contact if they have any questions about the research or their data in the future.