Using Participant Fields

Once you have your participant fields configured and populated with values, you can begin to leverage them in powerful ways. This article provides details on how to use participant fields for dynamic text replacement, logic, and ease of information access. Refer to the Participant Fields Overview article for basic information about what participant fields are, the types of fields, and how to populate them.

Dynamic Text Replacement

A very common use case of participant fields is the ability to dynamically replace text. For example, you might wish to ask participants if they had symptoms since their surgery. If you already have the date saved in a custom date field called SurgeryDate, you can use this custom field to dynamically display the date in a survey to them. Alternatively, you might use their first name stored in a demographic field to personalize an automated email.

Participant fields can be invoked in both notifications and surveys (prompts as well as default values) for dynamic text replacement. Just add the following to your text to dynamically display their values:

• Demographic Fields: <%DemographicField.FieldName%>, replacing “FieldName” with the demographic field’s name
• Identifier Fields: <%ParticipantIdentifier%> or <%SecondaryIdentifier%>
• Custom Fields: <%CustomField.FieldName%>, replacing “FieldName” with the custom field’s name

In some scenarios, you might wish to dynamically display a modified version of a custom field (e.g. 2 days before “SurgeryDate”). Refer to the Expressions article for information on how to implement expressions that can present modified field values.

Segment, Schedule, & Survey Navigation Logic

A powerful application of participant fields is segment, schedule, and survey navigation logic. For example, you can:

• Create a segment of diabetic participants by filtering for when the DiabetesDiagnosis custom field is not empty.
• Create a schedule to deliver a survey and notification 2 days before their SurgeryDate custom date field.
• Skip survey questions about smoking if their SmokingStatus custom text field is No.

For Segments, refer to the Filtering With Participant Segments article for more information. Demographic, identifier, and custom fields can all be part of the segment criteria.

For Schedules, refer to the Schedule Types article for more information. Participant fields can drive schedules in various ways:

• The "Based on Participant Events" schedule can be triggered relative to a custom date field.
• The "On Meeting Criteria" schedule can be triggered by participant fields if included in the criteria.
• All schedules can be filtered to only apply to a subset of participants with particular participant field values.
• When sending notifications as a schedule action, alternative phone numbers or email addresses saved in a custom field can be set as the recipient, which is often useful for contacting caretakers.

For Survey Navigation, refer to the Navigation (Branching) Rules article for more information. Participant fields can be used to skip survey steps and form items.

Accessing Participant Info

Participant fields can surface data that study teams need to reference quickly and/or frequently. Perhaps you have a segment and wish to display the values of certain participant fields (phone number, upcoming surgery date, etc.). When creating your segments, you can check the box to “Configure Columns” and select which participant fields are visible.

Additionally, if you wish to more easily access participant information in your data exports, all participant fields are included in the Participant Data Export. Saving high-level participant data in these fields can make it fairly easy to reference this information when analyzing your data exports.