You can design a study into multiple phases (e.g., a 1‑week pre‑treatment phase, a treatment phase, and a 1‑week post‑treatment phase) by combining participant variables, criteria, and triggering logics. This guide shows a simple setup you can reuse.
The Situation
You want a study with three distinct phases:
- Phase 1: 1 Week Pre‑Treatment
- Phase 2: During Treatment
- Phase 3: 1 Week Post‑Treatment
Each phase should display the appropriate activities at the right times, and transitions between phases should occur based on your rules.
What to Do?
-
Define a Participant Variable for the study phase.
- Add a variable named Participant’s study phase with following values:
- Pre
- During
- Post
- Initialize Participants to Pre for the pre‑treatment phase.
- Make sure to note the question ID (Q27283_1), as it will be required in the next step.
- Add a variable named Participant’s study phase with following values:
-
Set the Criteria.
- Navigate to your Phase-Based activity.
- Go to the Triggering Logics tab.
- Select User Triggering Logic.
- In the Criteria field:
- For Pre-treatment activities: Q27283_1 == 1
- For treatment activities: Q27283_1 == 2
- For Post-treatment activities: Q27283_1 == 3
- Save and publish the activity.
-
Move Participants Between Phases.
- Update the Participant’s study phase variable to control transitions.
- Start of Treatment: set the variable to During
- After Treatment: set the variable to Post
Pro Tip
When designing studies with multiple phases, make sure to clearly define the transitions between phases and ensure that participant variables are updated in real-time. This ensures that the correct activities are displayed at the right times and prevents confusion during transitions.