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• REDCap stands for Research Electronic Data Capture and is a secure web application for building and managing online surveys and databases. Without any coding knowledge, you can create intuitive web forms that allow logged-in users to enter new data in a safe way. You can transform such web forms into surveys by making them public.
• This introduction manual is provided by ZHAW Services Forschungsdaten and is meant as an introduction to REDCap for ZHAW-researchers. It discusses how to set up an account in REDCap, how to set up and manage a project, how to design survey instruments, how to use longitudinal data and repeated instruments, the use of the multi-language management plugin, the export and import of data, and the use of the API tool. Accompanying exercises for REDCap, to get some practical experience with the software, are included at regular intervals. These exercises will ask you to make or adapt REDCap projects. The solutions to these exercises are included on the same page, allowing you to check your own work. For further information, or requests for getting hands on training or support, contact ZHAW Services Researchdata at researchdata@zhaw.ch.

Table of Content

• Part 1: Introduction to REDCap
  • 1.1: Read before starting
    • 1.1.1: About REDCap
    • 1.1.2: Main Features
    • 1.1.3: REDCap principles
      • 1.1.3.1: Projects
      • 1.1.3.2: Users
    • 1.1.4: Recommended Training Materials
  • 1.2: Get an account and log in
    • 1.2.1: Setting up your Edu-ID account
    • 1.2.2: Activating two-factor authentication
    • 1.2.3: Create a REDCap account
  • 1.3: Overview of the REDCap website and pages
    • 1.3.1: My Projects
      • 1.3.1.1: Organizing projects in folders/categories
    • 1.3.2: New project
      • 1.3.2.1: Exercise 01: Make a REDCap project
    • 1.3.3: Help and FAQ
    • 1.3.4: Training Videos
    • 1.3.5: Profile
  • 1.4: Overview of project stages
• Part 2: Development phase ‐ designing surveys
  • 2.1: Creating a new REDCap-project
    • 2.1.1: Starting a project as an empty project
    • 2.1.2: Starting a project from an existing XML file
    • 2.1.3: Starting a project from a template
  • 2.2: Project page overview
    • 2.2.1: Project home screen
      • 2.2.1.1: REDCap page navigation
      • 2.2.1.2: Project home and navigation
      • 2.2.1.3: Data collection
      • 2.2.1.4: Applications
      • 2.2.1.5: External modules
      • 2.2.1.6: Help and information
      • 2.2.1.7: Project home tab
      • 2.2.1.8: Project setup
      • 2.2.1.9: Other functionality
      • 2.2.1.10: Project revision history
  • 2.3: Main project settings
    • 2.3.1 Exercise 02: Making a new project
  • 2.4: User rights management
    • 2.4.1: Adding users with custom rights
    • 2.4.2: Adding users according to user roles
    • 2.4.3: Data Access Groups (DAGs)
  • 2.5: Designing the survey instruments and field types
    • 2.5.1: Basic operations with fields and survey instruments
      • 2.5.1.1: Creating fields
      • 2.5.1.2: Deleting fields
      • 2.5.1.3: Changing the order of existing fields
      • 2.5.1.4: Copying a field
      • 2.5.1.5: Creating new survey instruments
      • 2.5.1.6: Deleting, renaming, copying, or downloading survey instruments
      • 2.5.1.7: Enabling a survey instrument as a survey
      • 2.5.1.8: Exercise 03: Making a medical questionnaire (1) - basic field and instrument operations
    • 2.5.2: Field types/variable types
      • 2.5.2.1: General field information, and record ID
      • 2.5.2.2: Short text box and validation
        • 2.5.2.2.1: Exercise 04: making a medical questionnaire (2): field validation
      • 2.5.2.3: Notes box
      • 2.5.2.4: Calculated fields
      • 2.5.2.5: Multiple Choice - Drop-down list (single answer)
      • 2.5.2.6: Multiple Choice - Radio buttons (single answer)
      • 2.5.2.7: Checkboxes (multiple asnwers)
      • 2.5.2.8: Yes/No field
      • 2.5.2.9: True/False fields
      • 2.5.2.10: Signature field
      • 2.5.2.11: File upload field
      • 2.5.2.12: Slider field
      • 2.5.2.13: Descriptive text field
        • 2.5.2.13.1: Video/Image/PDF embedding
      • 2.5.2.14: Begin new section
      • 2.5.2.15: Dynamic SQL query
      • 2.5.2.16: Matrix of fields
      • 2.5.2.17: Exercise 05: Making a medical questionnaire (4) - Adding additional field types
    • 2.5.3: Advanced functionality for fields and survey instruments
      • 2.5.3.1: Variable piping
      • 2.5.3.2: Branching logic
      • 2.5.3.3: Action tags
      • 2.5.3.4: Smart variables
      • 2.5.3.5: Field embedding
      • 2.5.3.6: Exercise 06: Making a medical questionnaire (5) - Advanced field functions
    • 2.5.4: Making snapshots of instruments
    • 2.5.5: Marking the survey as completed
      • 2.5.5.1: Exercise 07: Making a medical questionnaire (6) - Data sensitivity and obligatory fields
• Part 3: Development phase ‐ scheduling surveys
  • 3.1: Updating settings - repeated instruments and scheduling
  • 3.2: Approach 1: Using automated email scheduling
    • 3.2.1: Defining events
    • 3.2.2: Repeating instruments
    • 3.2.3: Setting automated invitations
    • 3.2.4: Setting up automated invitations (2)
    • 3.2.5: Survey distribution tools - creating an email to invite participants to fill out the participant information form
  • 3.3: Approach 2: using events and calendar scheduling
  • 3.4: Other distribution methods
  • 3.5: Finalizing the scheduling
• Part 4: Development phase ‐ entering data and project testing
  • 4.1: Data entry via csv files
  • 4.2: Data entry via xml files
  • 4.3: Manual data entry
  • 4.4: Sending out participant invitations
  • 4.5: Testing adding data, and moving to production phase
• Part 5: Production phase
  • 5.1: Moving to the analysis and clean-up phase
• Part 6: Analysis and clean‐up phase
  • 6.1: Creating reports
    • 6.1.1: Main report settings
    • 6.1.2: Set report access rights
    • 6.1.3: Add fields to reports
    • 6.1.4: Filtering report records
  • 6.2: Stats and summary
  • 6.3: Exporting data
    • 6.3.1: Exporting project reports
    • 6.3.2: Exporting the whole project
  • 6.4: API-functionality
    • 6.4.1: API rights management
    • 6.4.2: Requesting API-tokens
• Part 7: Other functionality
  • 7.1: Multi-language management
  • 7.2: Ensure anonymity and have prizes
  • 7.3: Survey Queues: connect multiple instruments
  • 7.4: Stop actions / ask for consent first
  • 7.5: Layout
    • 7.5.1: Show a progress bar in a survey with multiple pages
  • 7.6 External modules
• Part 8: Completing a project