Survey Settings

The Process 

1. Navigate to the left menu > Designer
   
   

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2. The Designer allows each survey to be managed separately and individually. Once an instrument is enabled as a survey, you can select the "survey settings" button.
   
   

   Open

   

The following list reviews each customization option available within survey settings:

BASIC SURVEY OPTIONS:

• Survey Status: Options include, Survey Active and Survey Offline. This feature is helpful if you are using the Public Survey Link and would like to deactivate a survey so those with the link can no longer add surveys responses.

• Survey Title: This is what will appear at the top of the survey in survey view.
  
  

  • Note, the survey title (red) and the instrument name (blue) can be different.
    
    

• Survey Instructions: An opportunity for you to enter instructions regarding the survey. The default is "Please complete the survey below. Thank you!" Ideally you place survey instructions here, instead of inserting on the instrument as a descriptive field. This way, you can change survey instructions as needed without submitting changes for review (which is required to change text in a descriptive field).

SURVEY DESIGN OPTIONS:

This section provides opportunity to customize the layout and appearance. Note, the logo will appear at the top of the survey, above the title.

• You may choose to copy a survey’s design to other surveys as needed using the button shown in the top right corner of this section.

SURVEY CUSTOMIZATIONS:

• Question Numbering: Select whether you want REDCap to auto-number your questions (fields) or if you'd like to custom-number them within the designer.

• Pagination (Question Display): Select if questions (fields) should appear all on 1 page or a page per section.

  • If you have a long survey it is recommended to display each section on its own page. Each time a participant navigates to the next page, the data from the previous page is saved.

• Allow a participant to download a PDF: This option will display a button for the participant to download a PDF file of their responses for the survey they just completed.

• Save a  PDF: This option provides REDCap users the opportunity to save a PDF of the responses to a "file upload" field elsewhere in the project.

• Survey-specific Email: Specify a different, validated email field that is not the record designated email, to send the survey.

  • A survey-specific email invitation field can be enabled for any given survey, in which you can designate any email field in your project to use for sending survey invitations for that particular survey. Thus, you can collect several email addresses (e.g., for a student, a parent, and a teacher) and utilize each email for a different survey in the project.

  • Then you can send each person an invitation to their own survey, after which all the survey responses get stored as one single record in the project.  The survey-specific email field is similar to the project-level email invitation field except that it is employed only for the survey where it has been enabled.

  • In this way, the survey-level email can override an existing email address originally entered into the Participant List or the project-level email field (if used). This feature allows users to have data entry workflows that require multiple surveys where the participant is different for each survey. (Note: The email field can exist on any instrument in the project, and you may use a different email field on each survey. You may also use the same email field for multiple surveys.)

• Required Fields Display: If enabled the * must provide value text will appear beneath all ‘Required’ fields.  

• View Aggregate Results: After completing the survey, participants can view ALL responses in aggregate graphical format and/or as descriptive statistics. Also, the individual respondent’s answers will be highlighted in yellow.

  • Note, this should not be used if PHI is collected via the survey.

• Text-to-Speech: Allows text on survey page to be read audibly to participants. When enabled, icons will be displayed next to all text on the survey, and when clicked, the text will be read out loud to the participant (must have device speakers turned on).  More details (Text to Speech)    

• Show or Hide Submit buttons: Hiding the Submit buttons can be useful if you are not using the survey for data collection but for instructional purposes or other similar use cases.

• Customize the text of the submit buttons: Provide alternative text for the 'Submit', 'Next Page', and 'Previous Page' buttons displayed at the bottom of every survey page.

SURVEY ACCESS:

• Response Limit: Indicate if you want the survey to de-activate after a certain number of responses have been collected. 

  • An important note about using the Response Limit feature is that if the limit has been reached for a given survey, then the survey will no longer show up in a participant's Survey Queue (if enabled), the Survey Auto-continue option (if enabled on the Survey Settings page) will skip over this survey, and also Automated Survey Invitations (if enabled) will no longer be scheduled for the survey

    1. RECORD DELETION NOTE: If records/responses are deleted from the project after the
       response limit has been reached, in which the number of responses falls below the limit
       again, then the survey will begin showing up in the Survey Queue again, the Survey Auto continue option will begin working normally again, and Automated Survey Invitations will begin to be scheduled again. However, in this case, any invitations that did not get scheduled via Automated Survey Invitations after the limit had been reached will *not* get automatically scheduled again if the response count falls below the limit due to the deletion of records/responses, in which case those invitations would have to be scheduled manually.

    2. LONGITUDINAL NOTE: If your project has the longitudinal module enabled, then please keep in mind that the Response Limit will be applied to each event individually where the survey is utilized. For example, if the response limit is set to 50, then even though the survey on Event 1 has reached the limit, the survey on Event 2 and so forth will still be open if the survey on those events have not reached the limit.

• Time Limit: The amount of time that each respondent has to complete the survey based on when they were initially sent the survey invitation.

  • Note: This feature excludes public survey links and is not applicable for survey links sent via Alerts & Notifications.)

• Survey Expiration: Identify when the survey should switch from active to de-active.

• Save & Return: If you’re survey is long or you want to allow respondents to save the survey and return to it later, you can enable that here. This option provides respondents with a 'Save & Return Later' button on the survey page, which allows them to save their progress and return where they left off to complete the survey any time in the future.  

  • Allow respondents to return without needing a return code: By default, when respondents click the 'Save & Return Later' button on a survey, they will need the return code provided to them in order to return to the survey later to begin where they left off.
    But this behavior can be modified by checking the checkbox, which will allow anyone with only the survey link to return to the survey and view all previously entered responses WITHOUT needing a return code.

  • NOTE: If you are collecting identifying information (e.g., PII, PHI), for privacy reasons it is HIGHLY recommended that you leave the option unchecked, to enforce a return code.

SURVEY TERMINATION OPTIONS:

• Auto-continue: When enabled this will automatically start the next survey instrument after finishing this survey.

  • Linking surveys together is only supported inside the same event and must be enabled for each survey you wish to link. This feature allows you to have separate survey instruments
    strung together to appear as though they were a single survey to the survey participant.  

  • This is especially useful for complex longitudinal project where different combinations of
    instruments are given in separate events.

• Re-direct to URL: If enabled, once a survey is submitted, the participant will be redirected to a URL Webpage instead of viewing survey completion text.

• Survey Completion Text: This is the text that will appear when the respondent submits the survey. It is not emailed to them, it merely appears on the screen when they click

  Submit. You can edit this text, use piping and some HTML.

• E-Consent & Auto-Archiver: See E-Consent Knowledge Article.

  • When enabled, upon survey completion, a compact PDF copy of
    the survey response will be automatically stored in the project's File Repository, from  which the archived PDFs can be downloaded at any time.

  • NOTE: This feature is highly recommended to use while eConsenting participants via a survey. This feature only works when the instrument is completed as a survey.

• Confirmation Email: Customize an email to send to the record designated email (or the survey-specific email if indicated previously in the survey settings)

  • Note that in Send Confirmation Email you can attach brochures / PDFs about your study, etc.  

    • Since email is not considered a secure form of communication this is NOT recommended if the survey contains identifying information (PHI).

    • If it is a participant list survey, you have the participant’s email

    • If it is a public survey and this “Send Confirmation” feature is enabled, the participant will see a question that says “do you want to receive a confirmation email” and ask for their email. The system will send the confirmation but the email will not be linked to the record.                                                 

Additional Considerations

• When you add a new instrument to a Production Project via Draft Mode, you cannot designate that instrument as a survey (and configure survey settings) until the draft changes have been submitted and approved.

• Survey settings can be changed for Production Projects without entering Draft Mode