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Best Practices for building a user friendly study (do’s and don’ts)

Updated

Do:

  1. Think about the structure of your CRF before beginning to build your study:
    • Study forms are ideal for data that will only be collected once
    • Repeated data structures can be associated with unscheduled events or repeated measures. It is best suited for events that will happen more than once or may not happen at all.
    • Surveys are questionnaires sent to the participants through their email
    • Are data validations triggered where necessary?
    • Does a data entry user have to skip around the CRF?
    • Consider the use of the Add a Report Button where needed throughout your forms. This will prevent relying on the data entry user to self-navigate to this form and create a steady flow. You can make the button appear to the user depending on the criteria being selected in a previous field by using Dependencies (field logic)
    • The summary field is ideal for visualizing an “At a Glance” information, where you can easily access data entered in separate areas of a record, all in one field. The content of this field can include calculations to check if a specific report was added or if a specific response was selected in a checkbox field or any other field type.
  2. Think about what you want your exported data to contain.
    How you build your study is directly related to how your data will appear when exported.
    • Did you use the correct field types?
    • Do you have all of the options you need in your option groups?
    • If you copied and pasted a step, did you review your variable names and copy dependencies?

  3. Always create a test record before going live and enter data in all of your forms, reports, and surveys.
  4. Keep in mind that you can easily set up email notifications upon certain study events
  5. Have a data management plan in place before going live

Don't:

  1. Use reports for data that you would like to use in automations with
  2. Create a study without concern for your variable names, as this is what will determine how your data is identified when it is exported
  3. Make changes to your study without understanding the implications
  4. Use grid fields if you are unsure how many rows you will need; opt for a repeated measure field

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