How do I send notifications at different times for each participant? Answered

Thejas Suvarna

Regarding the notifications and triggers, our study design requires sending of notifications/text messages on days and times specific to individual participants. So I will have to manually set up the participant's notification schedule, for each participant. Here is what I have been trying so far:

  • Create a push notification in 'Notifications' (I have also set up SMS, but since right now I can only receive responses through the notification/survey combination, I've been trying more push notifications). To do this I go to 'Notifications' in the top level navigation, set an identifier, choose 'Push Notification' as the type, then write the title and body, e.g. title "Tell us how today went!" and body "press this notification to be taken to your questionnaire!"
  • Go to my project and go to the Schedules tab, click the Add Schedule button, choose Based on a Specific Date, enter a name and delivery time, filter participants and then add a survey in the actions and a notification.

 

**EDIT** 

we want to have the participant plan 2 exercise sessions for the coming week, say between Friday and Sunday tell us when during the next week they intend to exercise. They need to pick two days. Originally, our plan was that for each day they need to tell us roughly when they intend to exercise--like, choose from a set of 4 hour time blocks (e.g., 8am-12noon, 12noon-4pm, 4pm-8pm, etc.). For each point at which a participant intends to exercise, we randomize if they receive a notification and if so, what type they receive. If they receive a notification, the participant should receive the notification at the beginning of their four hour exercise time block. So, if a participant plans to exercise Tuesday at noon-4pm and Wednesday 4pm-8pm, then Tuesday they might be randomized to get no notification and Wednesday they might be randomized to get any one of their low-reflection prompts, which should be delivered around 4pm. From what I can tell about MyDataHelps Designer, I'm not sure if we can have a field autopopulate if we ask them to choose a timeblock -- it sounds like we would need them to give us an estimate of what time they intend to exercise as a point in time rather than an interval--which might be fine. But let me know if I'm incorrect about that.
 
So to schedule a notification, I need to have both a date and rough time, and I won't know either until the participant sends me the exercise planning survey responses, which they will fill out every week. The other aspect of this is the randomization schedule. So basically, I can set the randomization schedule in advance for each participant. I can say, session 1 they will get nothing, session 2 they will get low-reflection prompt number 6, etc, on through 24 planned sessions (2 a week for 6 weeks). But what I won't know in advance is 1) the exact low-reflection notifications to send, which they write themselves, and 2) the exact days/times to send the notifications. I will get (1) at the beginning of the study from each participant (who will be enrolled on a rolling basis); I will get (2) every week from their planning survey. 
 
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3 comments

Date Votes
  • Comment author
    Thejas Suvarna
    • Official comment
    Thank you so much for the detailed outline. This was really helpful. 
     
    I've distilled your message into the following flowchart with some thoughts about implementation strategies. 
     

     
    To give you an idea of what this might look like, this would require:
    - Conducting randomization for each participant at the beginning of each week to specify the randomization group.
    - Creating schedules to comprehensively specify the type of notification to be delivered based on the following factors:
    • Exercise # (2 options)
    • Time of Day (8, 12, 4)
    • Notification Type ( 9 different low reflection types + 1 for high reflection - assumes high reflection can be 1 survey and the question asked is driven by a custom field)

    This can get quite gnarly to do self-service. Alternatively, we offer an implementation service through which we can conduct randomization behind the scenes and automate the process for delivering notifications. If we're able to get some clarity on the following items, this would be something we could get up and running.

    • Which Reflection Bucket (None, Low, High) the participant gets assigned to (Breakdown/Distribution of how this is assigned)
    • Which Low Reflection statement is delivered (Distribution for how to choose which reflection statement)
    • Which High Reflection question is delivered (Distribution for choosing which question)

    Send an email to cs@careevolution.com with the information above to explore this option.

     

  • Comment author
    Thejas Suvarna

    Hi there, 

    Can we get more details on the definition of the randomization schedule? 

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  • Comment author
    Thejas Suvarna
    There are two types of notifications. One is the "low reflection" type and one is the "high reflection" type. The low reflection type is written by the participant at the beginning of the study, by filling out a series of fill in the blank sentences. They write 9 total. The high reflection type is a reflective prompt that requires the participant to respond to us, via text or survey, whatever allows us to have the cleanest comparison. 
     
    We want to have the participant plan 2 exercise sessions for the coming week, say between Friday and Sunday tell us when during the next week they intend to exercise. They need to pick two days. Originally, our plan was that for each day they need to tell us roughly when they intend to exercise--like, choose from a set of 4 hour time blocks (e.g., 8am-12noon, 12noon-4pm, 4pm-8pm, etc.). For each point at which a participant intends to exercise, we randomize if they receive a notification and if so, what type they receive. If they receive a notification, the participant should receive the notification at the beginning of their four hour exercise time block. So, if a participant plans to exercise Tuesday at noon-4pm and Wednesday 4pm-8pm, then Tuesday they might be randomized to get no notification and Wednesday they might be randomized to get any one of their low-reflection prompts, which should be delivered around 4pm. From what I can tell about MyDataHelps Designer, I'm not sure if we can have a field autopopulate if we ask them to choose a timeblock -- it sounds like we would need them to give us an estimate of what time they intend to exercise as a point in time rather than an interval--which might be fine. But let me know if I'm incorrect about that.
     
    So to schedule a notification, I need to have both a date and rough time, and I won't know either until the participant sends me the exercise planning survey responses, which they will fill out every week. The other aspect of this is the randomization schedule. So basically, I can set the randomization schedule in advance for each participant. I can say, session 1 they will get nothing, session 2 they will get low-reflection prompt number 6, etc, on through 24 planned sessions (2 a week for 6 weeks). But what I won't know in advance is 1) the exact low-reflection notifications to send, which they write themselves, and 2) the exact days/times to send the notifications. I will get (1) at the beginning of the study from each participant (who will be enrolled on a rolling basis); I will get (2) every week from their planning survey. 
     
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