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REDCap 101.3 Creating and navigating a REDCap project

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REDCap 101.3 Creating and navigating a REDCap project

Owned by Sumon Chattopadhyay
Last updated: Feb 17, 2023 by Alyssa Hill
4 min read

Creating a new project

Now let's create a demo project and walk through it together.

 

When creating a new project, you will be prompted to make sure you've registered your project in ProTrackS.

 

If you've already registered and added your CTSI number to your project title, then you may select "I Agree". If not, select "Cancel" and make sure your title contains the CTSI ID.

Note: If you are creating a "Practice/Just for fun" project, you cannot collect real data. A CTSI ID is not required for practice/just for fun projects as they are never pushed to production. Simply request the project be created with this purpose and provide a description under ‘Project notes’

  • All projects which plan to collect real data must:

    • Register project with a CTSI ID

    • Request project be created

    • Configure project in development mode & complete testing

    • Once testing is complete, request your project be moved to production

    • Only after a projects production request has been approved by a REDCap Administrator may real data collection begin

    • As a best practice…

      • Project purpose “Other” shouldn’t be used

      • Provide a description under ‘Project notes’

Once a new project is requested, we try to acknowledge and approve all requests within 24 hours, so please plan accordingly!

Project-level navigation

When you first access your newly created project, you will be taken to the "Project Setup" page.

 

Additionally, the navigation pane on the left is where you will find most of the features that you will be using on a daily basis. Some of these may be hidden for you depending on your user account rights. Below is a short introduction to each section shown here. Some of the links will be explored in greater depth in alter sections of this training.

Project Home and Design

If you are designing and creating your REDCap project, you will be spending most of your time in the links shown in this section.

Data Collection

This is the section that houses links to the survey distribution tools, record status dashboard, and to add/edit records.

Applications

REDCap comes with many features that help with data collection, data managements, and study management. Many of these can be found in this section. Some of these may be hidden for you depending on your user account rights.

Reports

If you create custom data reports from the "Data Exports, Reports, and Stats" link in the Applications section above, they will become accessible here.

External Modules

Sometimes, core REDCap functionality is not enough for your project. External Modules are extensions to REDCap developed by the community, available for use within your projects, if needed. If you have any External Modules enabled for your project, they will be shown here.

Help & Information

Links here will quickly take you to the FAQ and training videos that were shown earlier.

REDCap help within the application

You may have noticed that there are many buttons and links within the Project Setup page that take you to helpful videos or articles about certain features within REDCap.

 

The REDCap application has many of these links available at various points in the application. These are designed by the Vanderbilt team to make using REDCap as stress-free as possible. Click around when in doubt- you may find a resource that will help when you are stuck!

Now that you know how to navigate within your project, let’s start creating and configuring individual instruments for your project.

Head over to the next section of REDCap 101, or head back to the table of contents.