Participants are required for data entry in Castor. If you have not yet created any participants, you must complete this action first. This article explains how to create a new participant in Castor.

You can also find this manual item within Castor Academy. Click here to view the Castor Academy ‘Data Entry in Castor CDMS course.

Entering the study:

When the study admin has invited you to the study and you have created an account you are able to log in to Castor. Once logged in you will see the following screen: 

If the study is live, you can access the study and start gathering data by clicking on the study in the overview. 

Opening a participant:

Every participant in Castor resembles a patient, with its own participant ID and represents all information collected about a patient. A participant can also represent a sample (in a biobank, for example), or several patients (parent-child, for example). To open a participant, click on the participant line.

Creating a participant:

If a participant does not yet exist for the patient we will enter data for, we have to create a new participant. You can do this by clicking the '+ New' button. 

Data input

When you open a participant, the data entry view is displayed:

This is the main data entry view. It consists of the following elements:

1. Participant number, status, and participant completeness. Randomization information will also be displayed here when available. 
2. Visits and forms. Here you can navigate through the eCRF and see the individual progress per visit and forms. Visits and forms can have three different stages of completion:

• Not Started (white).
• In Progress (orange).
• Completed (green). 
  When every required field for a form has been completed, the form icon will show as a green dot. 
  When every step inside a visit has been completed, the visit will be marked as completed with a green dot visible.

3. The fields added to the form - this example shows a date field.
4. Field options, here you can perform various actions that apply to only the field on this row, e.g. 'Undo' or 'Set field as missing', add comments or create queries.
5. This button returns you to the participant overview list.
6. You can use the Next/Previous buttons to navigate through the forms of the participant.

Note: See here how you can perform data entry for encrypted fields.

Users are able to enter partial dates as a missing day or a missing day and month, you have a total of three options to choose from in the dropdown menu. Please see the below screenshot:

When entering a partial date, you would enter the known information. For example, if you selected ‘Day and month not known’, you would need to enter the year in the field. 

Field status icons

1. The status icons indicate the status for a field. The status are as follows:

• Green: The value is valid and the field is saved. 
• Orange: The field is required and no value has been entered yet. 
• Red: The value is invalid and the field has not been saved. 
• No icon: The field is not required.

2. If an information text has been entered for a field, it can be displayed by clicking on the (i) icon.
3. When the value for a field matches the value set for a validation message, e.g. a warning, an exclusion or an error, this will be displayed in a coloured banner below the field.
4. To clear the value from a field, click the cogwheel to the right of the value. The following menu will be displayed:

To clear the value for a field choose 'Clear'. If you have enabled automatic clearing of dependent child fields in the 'Settings' tab, all inapplicable child fields are cleared. For example: when changing the gender from female to male, all pregnancy fields are cleared. The system will always ask for confirmation before existing data is cleared.

For more information about the field options, refer to the helpdesk articles on adding comments to a field, the audit trail and adding queries to a field.