Robust and low-cost Optical Mark Recognition for automated data entry

In survey research, the offline paper-based questionnaire still necessary for data collection. Although the online survey is more convenient, internet system and portable device are needed for operating. That is not practical for some surveys. Furthermore, the paper-based questionnaire requires data entry by human which will take long time and easy to mistake. Therefore, this paper proposes the automated data entry by Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) with the proposed paper-based questionnaire. This questionnaire will input by scanner and the data will be displayed in the appropriate report for data analysis. However, the pattern of questionnaires is different for each survey. In this paper, the method for creating the questionnaire, which contains only closed-ended questions, is also proposed for user self-designed including the proper report of the output that will be opened or edited in the well-known spreadsheet software. According to the experimental results, the accuracy rate is high and suitable for real application that is the average of accuracy rate is 93.36 % for choice selection by three patterns of the markers.