ResearchOnTheGo
User Guide for Portal Users
Create an account
An account can be created either by using the "create account" button on our portal log-in page or by invitation from another researcher. After filling in the form, click on "register" and your account will be created. If you have been invited by another researcher to join a study, that study will be immediately visible to you as soon as you log in. Please read our personal data policy to know more about how we manage your profile data.
Create a study
After login in, you will see a list of all your studies, the ones you have created or been invited to join. In order to create a new study, simply use the button "create new study". This will prompt you to provide a name for your study. Click "Continue" to proceed to configure your study.
Study pages
Your study pages are where you can configure and manage a study. You will be guided to these pages when creating a new study or by clicking on an existing study from your start page. Your study pages include a Description of your study, where you must enter a study description, a contact person for your study participants (you or another portal user), and you may also add a logo for your organization. The information entered here is visible for study participants in the App. By navigating to other tabs you can create and manage questionnaires (Questionnaires), view and invite researchers to this study (Researchers), View and enrol participants to this study (Participants), download data from your study (Data), or request activation of your study (Status). Only an "active" study can enrol participants and collect data.
Adding a contact person
The contact person information is part of the Study Description. The contact person information is visible in the App for all participants. For this reason, the contact person must agree to his/her contact information being shown in the App. To add a contact person, you must only provide the email for that person. All additional information is obtained from their registered account on the platform. If they do not already have an account, they will receive an invitation. By following the link on the invitation email, they can accept or decline being the contact person for the study.
Create a questionnaire
The questionnaires in each study are viewed, created and edited under the tab Questionnaires. A study may contain several questionnaires, each containing a set of questions. All questions in a questionnaire share the same schedule. That means that at the scheduled time, all questions in that questionnaire will be presented to the participant via the App. This allows you to, for example, create a set of questions to be answered in the morning and another set of questions to be answered in the evening. At the scheduled time, the App presents a notification to the participant requesting that he or she provide answers to that questionnaire.
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To create a new questionnaire, use the button "add questionnaire". This will prompt you to provide a name for the questionnaire and choose its schedule. The platform supports fixed schedules, for example, every Monday at 09:00; or randomized schedules, for example, 4 times randomly distributed between 10:00 and 14:00. Randomized schedules are appropriate for Experience Sampling Methodologies.
When setting the schedule it is also important to determine how long that notification will be active by entering a value for "cancel interaction after ___ minutes". This means that if the participant does not respond to the notification within this period, the questionnaire is considered missed or not answered. The participant may, however, provide answers to any of the questionnaires at any time. We label those answers as self-initiated as opposed to in response to a notification.
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Presto! Your questionnaire is now ready and scheduled and you can start adding questions. You may edit or remove the questionnaire by using the edit (pencil) or remove (trash can) icons to the right.
Add a question
After creating a questionnaire and setting its schedule, you can start populating your questionnaire with questions by using the button "add question" inside the questionnaire pannel. If you have more than one questionnaire in your study, each questionnaire panel will contain its own "add question" button.
After clicking on "add question" you will be prompted to select the type of question you would like to add: a visual scale with smileys, a numeric scale, a sliding numeric scale, free text, multiple choice or a drop-down menu.
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Select your question of choice and click "next" to be guided through the configuration of the question. In the following step, you can enter the question text and other configurations depending on the type of question.
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After confirming the question configuration, your new question will be visible in that questionnaire pannel.
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You may edit or remove the question by using the edit (pencil) or remove (trash can) icons to the right.
Invite a researcher
Under the Research tab, you can view, invite and manage other researchers with access to this study. The user who creates a study is automatically given the role of the study manager. Other researchers are given the role of study viewers. The difference between these roles is that only study managers can request the activation of a study, and they have the contractual responsibility to ensure that terms of service are being followed.
Request study activation
When you are ready to distribute your questionnaires to participants and start collecting data, you can request that your study be activated. A system administrator at ResearchOnTheGo can then activate your study if contractual and billing issues have been taken care of. If you not sure or have any questions please contact us.
Enroll participants
An active study can enroll participants and begin collecting data. You can view, enroll and manage participants under the Participants tab. To add a new participant, use the "new participant" button. You may add one or more participants by entering user IDs separated by a comma. It is important that participant IDs are not identifiable and personal security numbers, names, or other personal information are not allowed as participant IDs.
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Once a participant has been added to the study, you can create one-time enrollment credentials that allow the participant to log into the App. Simply select one or more participants by checking the box next to their ID and use the button "download enrollment material". This will generate one or more pdf files with a QR code that the participants can scan to log into the App. If the user does not wish to scan the QR code, he or she can manually enter the study link instead. You may distribute this enrollment material as a digital pdf or printed out on paper.
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Enrollment codes are specific to each user and can only be used once. If a participant has lost a phone or somehow lost access to the study, you can "unenroll from the study" and "download enrollment material" again. This will not affect the data previously collected by this participant, and new data will simply be added to previous data as soon as they log in and start using the App again.
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If a participant wishes to leave the study permanently, you may delete this participant from the study using the "delete from study" button. This will delete that participant ID from the platform but the data already provided will be maintained in the database. If you wish to alter data already collected by a participant, please contact us.
Download study data
All the data provided by participants is securely stored in our servers. You may, at any point, download the data currently available for an active study in the Data tab. You can select a part of the data or all of the data by filtering by participant ID, question ID, date, or time. After selecting the desired data, you may "preview" the data or directly "generate a download". Generating a download may take some time depending on the size of the file. When the file is ready, you can download it to your local computer.
