Set Reminders Based on Participants' Preferences

[zahra]

Sending reminders can significantly improve participant compliance in longitudinal, real-world studies. Allowing participants to choose how often they receive these reminders respects their preferences and can further boost engagement.

The Situation

You are running a study where participants need to complete a specific survey—for example, “Carb Intake”—every day. You want to send them In-App reminders, but you also want to let them choose whether they receive one, two, or three reminders per day. You plan to ask their preference in a “Baseline Survey” administered at the start of the study.

What to Do?

Here’s how to configure Avicenna to handle this need:

1. Create a Baseline Survey:

   • In your researcher dashboard, navigate to the Activities page and create a new Survey. Name it “Baseline Survey”.
   • In the survey editor, add a Single Answer question like: “How many times a day would you like to receive survey notifications?”
   • Add options corresponding to the choices you want to offer (e.g., 1, 2, 3).
   

2. Create the Experience Sampling Survey:

   • Create another survey (or other activity type) that participants need reminders for. Let’s call it “Carb Intake”.
   • Add the necessary content to this survey (e.g., questions about carbohydrate consumption).
   

3. Add a Triggering Logic (TL) to the Target Survey:

   • In the survey editor for “Carb Intake”, click on Triggering Logics in the top panel.
   • Add a Time triggering logic.
   • Configure it to prompt the survey daily.
   

4. Add Notification Templates to the Experience Sampling Survey:

   • While you’re still in the survey editor, click on Notification Templates in the top panel.
   • You need to create three notification templates, the same number as the maximum number of notifications a participant can receive. For each template:
     • Click on Create Template.
     • Select “Participant” as the “Recipient”.
     • Choose “Session Released” for the “Notify On” field.
     • Set the “Offset” for each template relative to when the survey is triggered. For example, for the first template, set that field to 0 (immediately), for the second one, set it to 2 hours, and for the third one, set it to 4 hours.
     • Set the Criteria for each template according to a specific answer in the “Baseline Survey”. Assuming the ID of Baseline Survey is 25310 and the Single-Answer question ID is 1, you should set Q25310_1 >= 1, Q25310_1 >= 2, and Q25310_1 == 3, respectively.
     • Enable the In-App medium and set the reminder message (e.g., “Don’t Forget to Log Your Carb Intake Information Today!”).
   

   You should see a list of templates like this linked to your survey.

   

5. Now, if the participant chooses, for example, “2” in the Baseline Survey question, they will receive two notifications, one the moment the Carb Intake survey is prompted, and another one as a reminder two hours later, if they don’t take care of the survey.