Surveys: Invite Participants

What is the Survey Invitation Log?

This log list participants who: (1) Have been scheduled to receive an invitation Or (2) Have received an invitation Or (3) Have responded to the survey. You can filter to review your participants' response statuses.

If I'm using the Participant Contact List to email survey invites and our mail server fails, REDCap may still return success messages even when no emails have been sent. Can error reporting be improved when sending emails?

In general, the error reporting for sending emails probably cannot be improved. The email-sending process is embedded in a chain of events that involves different systems. The REDCap application is far removed from some of the other systems and therefore cannot always know if a system at the delivery end sent the email.

Is there a limit to the time that a participant has to complete a survey once they have clicked on the survey link?

There is a time limit of 24 hours per page. If a participant selects the "Save & Return" option, their link is active until the project admin closes/de-activates the survey.

What is the “Start Over” feature for survey participants invited via Participant List?

The survey page allows participants invited via the Participant List to start over and re-take the entire survey if they return to the survey when they did not complete it fully, but the “Start Over” feature is only available if the Save & Return Later feature is disabled or if it is enabled and the participant did not click the Save & Return Later button.

I only get a public link when the first survey instrument is a survey. Where can I find public links for the other surveys in my project?

A public link is only possible when the first instrument is a survey. Only that survey can have a public link. All later instruments are considered a continuation of the earlier one(s). Later surveys capture different data but are completed by the same people. So the later instruments can only ever be distributed via Participant List. If different respondents will complete the other surveys, then a separate project should probably be used for each group of respondents.

Can email distribution lists or group email accounts be added to the Participant List to send survey invitations?

You should not use REDCap's Participant Email Contact list with group email addresses or distribution lists. The emailed invitations send only 1 unique survey link per email address; therefore, only the first person in the distribution group who clicks on the email link will be able to complete the survey.

For group distribution lists, you can:

1. Email the general "public" survey link provided at the top of the "Invite Participants" page directly from your email account, or
2. Add each individual email address from the distribution list to the Participant Contact list. You can copy/paste the emails from a list (Word or Excel) into REDCap.

The advantage of using REDCap's Participant Contact list and the individual emails is that REDCap will track responders and non-responders.

You'll be able to email only non-responders if you want to send a reminder. With the general distribution email, you won't be able to track responses and participants will have the potential to complete the survey more than once.

How can I review or cancel a scheduled survey reminder?

On the Survey Invitation Log page, there is a checkbox for displaying the reminders. Check that box and then click the button to apply the filters. Then you can use the red x to delete the reminders.

Is there a way to prevent someone from accessing a survey after you've sent them their link?

There is no way to withdraw a sent survey link or deactivate a survey on the record level.

You could create field in the project, “Block” as a yes/no question, and apply branching logic to all questions in the survey to only display when [block]<> "1". If you need to prevent a participant from seeing the questions, you could then select “Yes” on the block question in their record. As long as this was done before they clicked on the link, they would not see the survey questions to answer.

If the survey is for an already-existing record and the record is deleted before the participant clicks on the survey link, the participant will receive the message “Thank you for your interest, but you are not a participant for this survey.”

If you've already sent survey invitations, can you change the Designate Email field?

Yes, but it will only affect future invites. If you need to update the email field for already scheduled invites, you must delete the invites and reschedule.

How can I remove survey participants or multiple scheduled surveys?

Once a survey invitation is in the Survey Invitation Log, the only way to get rid of them through the UI is to click on the red X next to each one.

The easiest way to simply stop future surveys from going out is to add a new field call "Do not send further survey" in a "Control Center" form, add that to the ASI condition and click "Ensure logic is still true before sending the invitation?" in the Survey Invitation pop-up box

This effectively depends on "Ensure logic is still true before sending the invitation?" to get the ASI condition to be re-check (and evaluate to false) just before the survey invitation goes out. Whether changes in ASI and the checkbox will affect invitation already in the queue I don't know. Hence, please check before you use it in anger.

How do I manage multiple surveys Participant Contact Lists?

For projects with multiple surveys, there will be one participant list per survey. You’ll be able to select the survey specific to the survey name and event (longitudinal projects).

Participant List may be used to:

1. Send emails to many participants at once
2. Send individual survey invites directly from a data entry form

The Public Survey Link and Participant List have been separated onto different pages within Survey Distribution Tools because they each represent a different method for inviting survey participants.

Note: To be able to add participants directly to the Participant Contact List, the first data collection instrument (DCI) must be enabled a survey. All participants in all surveys must be added to the first survey of the project. If the first DCI is not a survey, you can add an email address to the first DCI and use the feature "Designate an Email" which will auto-populate the Participant Contact List.

How do I send out my survey?

The most common methods to send out a survey are the Public Link and the Participant List. These methods are on the "Survey Distribution Tools" page, which is accessed through the project menu's Data Collection section.

• Public Link: This is a single survey link for your project which all participants will click on. This link can be copied and pasted into the body of an email message in your own email client. It can also be posted on web pages. This is the most common method for large, anonymous surveys where you do not need to follow up with survey respondents.
• Participant List: This option allows you to send emails through REDCap and thereby track who responds to your survey. It is also possible to identify an individual's survey answers by providing an Identifier for each participant. This is the most common method when you need to know who has responded so far and who hasn't.
• Designate an Email field: You can capture email addresses for sending invitations to your survey participants by designating a field in your project. If a field is designated for that purpose, then any records in your project that have an email address captured for that particular field will have that email address show up as the participant's email address in the Participant List (unless an email address has already been entered for that participant in the Participant List directly).

Using the designated email address field can be especially valuable when your first data collection instrument is not enabled as a survey while one or more other instruments have been enabled as surveys. Since email addresses can only be entered into the Participant List directly for the first data collection instrument, the designated email field provides another opportunity to capture the email address of survey participants.

NOTE: If the participant's email address has already been captured directly in the Participant List, then that email address will supersede the value of the email field here when survey invitations are sent to the participant.

Compose Survey Invite: This option is available on the Participant List and on survey data entry pages for individual records. This allows you to create and send the actual survey invitations.

Can I remove survey invites in batch?

No. You must select each invite and reminder and click delete (red x).

If you make changes to piping, logic... email invite text..., will it update already scheduled invites?

No. You may have to delete scheduled invites and reschedule. And don't forget the reminders! They are not displayed by default.