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With the 2022.5 release, Castor CDMS allows inclusion of partial dates when configuring a date field in the CDMS form builder.
Therefore, you can determine whether a missing day or day and month are permitted when entering a date datapoint.
Once set, this action will be recorded in the study audit trail. This will be reflected in configured web surveys, visit forms, and repeating data forms (Castor Connect will be updated in an upcoming release to also allow this), and their printable.
The study admins can also configure how those partial dates will be handled by dependencies and validations.
Configuring partial dates
Follow the steps below to enable partial dates when creating or editing a date field:
1. When creating a date field, in the ‘Allow partial dates’ dropdown, select one of the following options:
- Not permitted - partial dates will not be allowed for this date field
- Missing day only - the date field will accept month and year
- Missing month and day - the field will accept year, day, and month can be entered optionally
2. If a date field allows partial dates to be entered, you can determine how those dates will be handled by dependencies and validations using the ‘Handling partial dates’ option:
- Ignore - if a partial date is entered, the validation or dependency will never match and will not be triggered.
- Trigger on matching month or year - a partial match will be used for the purposes of validations and dependencies
- Round up - partial dates will be rounded up to the latest calendar day for the purposes of validations and dependencies (e.g. March 2023 is treated as 31-03-2023)
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Round down - partial dates will be rounded down to the earliest calendar day for the purposes of validations and dependencies (e.g. March 2023 is treated as 01-03-2023)
For studies which already collected data in the date fields, it is possible to edit the date field to enable the partial dates option.
This will not lead to any data loss in those date fields.
Entering partial dates
Once the partial dates have been configured, an additional dropdown will appear in the data entry window where data entry users can select whether to enter a full date or a partial date:
The exact options in the dropdown menu will depend on whether the options ‘Missing day only’ or ‘Missing day and month’ are enabled for the field.
The validation messages will also be triggered depending on how the option ‘Handling partial dates’ has been configured.
The importing and exporting of partial date values is permitted, as long as the relevant date field(s) in the form(s) are configured to allow partial dates - this includes all standard export formats offered by Castor.
To import the partial dates, the data should conform to the following formats:
- Partial-date, missing day - UK-MM-YYYY
- Partial date, missing month and day - UK-UK-YYYY
When exporting, date data configured to allow partial entries will also be exported in the formats above.
Partial Dates in Calculation Fields
It is possible to use partial dates in calculation fields where the missing parts of the date are filled by adding zeros.
For example, 00-12-2022 when only day is unknown or 00-00-2022 if both day and month are not known.
Partial Dates in Surveys:
1. Web Surveys (Standard ePRO)
When a date field is configured to allow partial dates in the Form Builder, participants completing surveys on the web will be able to leave parts of the date blank or mark them as unknown (e.g., entering just a month and a year if they cannot recall the exact day).
2. Mobile Surveys (Castor Connect App)
As of the Castor Connect 2025.1.x release, partial dates are fully supported in the mobile ePRO app. Participants using Castor Connect experience partial date fields consistently with how they work in the main web platform, allowing them to skip or input 'unknown' for specific date components if the field is configured to allow it.