Collecting Participant Demographics

Collection Methods

To give projects flexibility, MyDataHelps collects minimal information from participants at the time of registration. Many projects will want to supplement this with their own targeted demographic information. There are several ways to do this:

1. When importing CSV data for invitations, you can include columns for various demographic fields. This data may come from external participant rosters or data systems.
2. In the participant management screen, you can manually set demographics. This is not practical to do at scale for large projects.
3. Collect and save the desired information in a survey, eConsent, or even a new participant survey. This is described further below.

Collecting Demographics in a Survey

To collect demographics in a survey, you will need a survey that asks for the necessary information: name, address, date of birth, medical or social conditions, etc. Some public templates in the survey store may provide a starting point.

It is good practice to collect demographic information in your enrollment survey. Steps asking for demographics can come after eligibility questions (if applicable) and before the consent steps.

In the step settings, you can choose to save the information into one of the standard demographics fields or a custom field. For more information, see Setting Demographic & Custom Fields From Survey Answers.

If sending a demographic survey separate from the enrollment survey, you may want to deliver the survey on enrollment. Create a survey schedule that sends your demographic survey with the "on enrollment" trigger. For more information, see Creating Schedules to Deliver Project Content.