Longitudinal projects allow for the collection of data over time with the ability to track changes and progress. Longitudinal instruments eliminate the need to recreate multiple of the same forms, where instead the form is created once and assigned to multiple time points within a project. Some useful situations for longitudinal projects include:
Long term studies
Clinical trials
Recruitment and enrollment combinations
Multi-site studies
Repeating surveys (medications, lab results, adverse events forms)
Enable Longitudinal functionality
Navigate to your project, and select the “Project Setup” tab
Under the “Main project settings”, click “Enable” next to “Use longitudinal data collection with defined events?”
Define Events / Arms for the project
On “Project Setup” in the “Define your events and designate instruments for them” section, click “Define My Events”
Type the name of the event in the text box, then click “Add New Event”
Repeat for each event as needed
Link Instruments to events
On “Project Setup” in the “Define your events and designate instruments for them” section, click “Designate Instruments for My Events”
Select “Begin Editing”
Check each data collection instrument that should be assigned to each specific event
Click “Save”
Note: to ensure advanced features like reporting and data quality checks in REDCap work properly, always assign the first form to the first event (order your instruments appropriately).
You can link and un-link events in your project during your project set-up and test. Once the project is in production, linking and un-linking events must be done by a REDCap Administrator, because you may lose data if you un-link an event.