Part 7: Other functionality
- We've covered the main functions of REDCap in the previous sections of the training material.
- Here, we'll cover some other more advanced functionality. You can skip those materials and move straight on to Part 8, if you're not interested in those advanced functions.
- They may however be handy to manage for example multi language management of surveys, or specific external modules that you want to use for your survey.
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To provide surveys in additional languages, REDCap has a built-in multi-language functionality.
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Using this functionality, you can translate your survey in additional languages, and activate them, so survey participants can choose which language to use.
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You can find the Multi-language management on the left side of the screen, under "Applications.
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First, add the languages that you need. Click on "Add new language" to add a language to your project. If you want a survey in just one other language than English, you specify only one, e.g., German.
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In the pop-up, specify the Language Id and the language display name.
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Alternatively, press "Import from file or system", or you can select a translation file from your hard drive.
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Activate the language for your project
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The language appears now in your list of languages. To use it, you need to activate it.
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Don't forget to save your changes
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Activate the language in surveys of your project
- Now switch to the tab "Forms/Surveys". Activate the language for each instrument in which you want the language to be active. You can choose Data Entry and Survey separately.
- Now switch to the tab "Forms/Surveys". Activate the language for each instrument in which you want the language to be active. You can choose Data Entry and Survey separately.
- You want to give a prize as an incentive for your survey?
- Great, then take a moment to analyze your data privacy requirements.
Case 1: Pseudo-anonymization is sufficient
- In case that pseudo-anonymization is sufficient for your survey, you can create two instruments in one REDCap project, one containing the survey, followed by an instrument to collect the contact data for the prizes. Be aware that the answers of both instruments will belong to the same record_id.
- If you first collect informed consent as described in 7.4: Stop Actions / Ask for consent first you probably don't want to invite people to the prices if they are not participating in the survey. In that case, you CANNOT link two instruments together, because the stop action will take you to the next survey, and not to the end.
- You can always use the approach of case 2.
Case 2: You need full anonymization
- In that case, you need to create two REDCap projects. One project will contain your survey, and the other project will contain the prizes. Modify the end of survey text of the first project to display the link to start the second survey.
- In case of asking for consent, use the stop-field method of 7.4: Stop Actions / Ask for consent first to provide the link only to the persons that agreed to survey participation.
- Be aware that depending on the number of participants, it can be possible to connect the answers of both surveys based on record_id or timestamps. The access to the data of prizes should be very limited.
Purpose
- In surveys where you first ask for informed consent or test inclusion/exclusion criteria, it is usually beneficial to create several instruments for each purpose. In that case, stop criteria won't serve the purpose to end the survey early: stop criteria only jump to the end of the current instrument. If you have selected to auto-continue to next survey (which you would do to start one instrument after the previous is finished) in the survey settings, the next instrument will start despite the fact that a stop condition holds. In this use case, you need to rely on the Survey Queue.
Pre-Requisites
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Make sure that the option to auto-continue to next survey is **NOT **selected.
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You have several instruments created that should appear one after the other to survey participants.
Configure the Survey Queue
- Check the checkbox Keep the Survey Queue hidden from participants?
- Activate all instruments that are part of the survey, except for the first
- For each activated survey instrument, specify
- after with survey it should follow
- and which additional (AND) or alternative (OR) condition must hold so that the instrument is shown.
Tips and additional hints
- Use the additional conditions to specify criteria such as informed consent, inclusion/exclusion criteria.
- If you have many conditions such as several inclusion/exclusion criteria, create a calculated (hidden) field that returns 1 if the survey continues and 0 if the survey should be ended. Use this field in the conditions in the survey queue. In that case, you have to change the formula only once (in the calculated field), and not several times (in the survey queue), in case of changes.
- You can keep stop criteria in case you want to stop the current instrument immediately and if you want to show the info message to the survey participant notifying them on ending the survey because of their selection.
- Stop criteria are limited to fields such as multiple-choice, radio buttons, etc., whereas the conditions in survey queues are as powerful as the conditions in branching logic
Pre-Requisites
- Have your consent text ready. A checklist is available per request.
- Important: Stop Actions can only be used in this scenario if you have only ONE instrument. A stop action simply jumps to the end of one instrument and would lead to starting the next instrument.
Informed Consent for anonymous survey Use Stop-field in your instrument
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In your REDCap project in the first instrument, start with a descriptive field that will contain the information text for the informed consent, or * you can add the text directly to the next field.
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Add one of the following fields to collect the approval/agreement
- Yes/No
- True/False
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Click on the Stop-Icon inline to add a stop action. Probably, you want to select the No-answer to end the survey immediately.
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After successfully setting the stop action, it will be displayed in the online designer as follows
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With this setting, the survey will jump to the end of the survey if the NO-answer is selected. Please notice that in case you have activated the survey queue, the stop action will jump to the next instrument.
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Create a field of type Descriptive Text, where you want to show a progress bar
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Add this piece of html-code to a descriptive text field
<div class="progress"><div class="progress-bar progress-bar-striped active" role="progressbar" style="width: 20%" aria-valuenow="75" aria-valuemin="0" aria-valuemax="100" >20% </div> -
In this example: the first 20% in width: 20% specifies how much the bar is filled, and the second 20% just at the end specify the text that is written in the progress bar
- In your project, go to External Modules in the sidebar under Applications
- REDCap displays a list of all external modules that are currently enabled, which is empty by default.
- Click on "manage" to see available modules
- Enable the module that you want. The list of enabled modules will give you the possibility to configure each enabled module. Information on the specific configuration options is given in the description of the external module.
- Note that you may need to contact the REDCap administrator to install or activate external modules.
- By default, one module is enabled for all projects. This module is checked by ZHAW Services Researchdata, whenever a REDCap update is performed.
- This is the simple ontology module, which has been configured to allow users to use field validation to select from a list of all Swiss postal codes.
- Note that, whenever an update is performed on REDCap, this may interfere with the functioning of external modules, and this may impact the functioning of your project.
- To ensure the security of the ZHAW REDCap server, performing updates containing security fixes has a high priority, and the updates may be applied, even if it interferes with certain external modules.
- We therefore suggest, to only use external modules for your project, if it is strictly necessary.