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.
Scheduling set-up (optional)
Scheduling can only be used with Longitudinal projects: Video Tutorial here
Scheduling can be turned on or off as desired in production or development. Scheduling produces automatically generated schedules by participant based on Arms and Events. The calendar event status can flag “no show” or “cancel” for visit status.
To enable, on “Project Setup” under “Enable optional modules and customizations”, click “Enable” next to “Scheduling module (longitudinal only)”
On the left navigation bar, select “Scheduling”
Select a record (or create new), define start date (and Arm if applicable), and click “Generate Schedule”
Input times and switch scheduled days of the week by changing dates as desired, then click “Create Schedule”
You will see a notice that your calendar was successfully created.
To see the Calendar, navigate to left Navigation pane and select Calendar under Applications
Example: Here you see the time and events for Participant 3
From the calendar, you can click on the event and view:
Data entry forms for the participant
Study ID, event, status
Add notes as desired