Filtering With Participant Segments

Segments help you organize your project's participants into meaningful groups. 

Using Segments

Segments allow you to interact with a subset of your participants. You can use segments to:

• View information for a selected segment at a glance in the participant viewer.
• Schedule surveys for different segments.
• Deliver notifications to certain segments.
• Perform bulk actions on a group of participants at once.

You can define a segment based on several kinds of criteria. The table below describes the criteria and some sample use cases.

Participant Identifiers	Create a segment for a specific group of individuals based on their participant identifiers. For example, if your project uses identifier prefixes for participant cohorts, you can create a segment for each cohort based on their identifiers.
Demographic Fields	Create a segment for individuals with certain demographic characteristics. For example, you might create a segment for participants matching a certain age range, gender, state or zip code, etc.
Custom Fields	Use your custom fields to create segments for participants matching certain values. For example, if you had a custom field for participant cohort, you could create a segment for participants in a specific cohort.
Enrollment Date, Creation Date, or Invitation Status	Create a segment for participants based on enrollment date, creation date, or invitation status. Creation date is defined as the date the participant was added into MyDataHelps, which could be the same as the enrollment date in certain cases. For example, you might create a segment for those who have been invited but not enrolled, or who have enrolled within the last month.
Survey Tasks and Answers	Create a segment for participants based on their survey task completion status, or answers to specific survey questions. For example, you might create a segment for participants who have enrolled but not yet completed their consent survey, or for participants who answered 'yes' to whether they still have pain in a post-surgical follow-up survey. Note: When creating a segment based on survey answer, you will want to use a combination of filter criteria to pinpoint the precise survey and step. For example: Survey="Surgical Follow-Up" + Step="Pain" + Answer="Yes".
App Platform	Create a segment for participants based on which application platform they use (iOS, Android, Web), when they last used it, and specific properties of that platform. For example, you might create a segment for participants whose "last used date" for their most recent device was more than a week ago, or who are website-only users. Note: The names of the platform properties you can filter on can be found in the participant details screen.

 

Creating a Segment

To create a participant segment:

1. Open your project and go to the "Participants" tab.
2. Select the segment drop-down menu.
   
3. Select "Add Segment."
4. Enter a name for your segment and select the filter criteria.
   
5. Select "Save."

When setting filter criteria, you can select various options depending on the type of data. For text data you might select "contains" or "starts with." For numerical data you might select "equals" or "greater than or equal to." You can set multiple criteria and logical conditions as explained in "Using Advanced Filter Logic" below.

Copying a Segment

Sometimes, you may want to create multiple segments with similar filter logic. Instead of starting from scratch for every segment, you can copy an existing segment and add or remove filter logic as needed. To copy a segment, click the copy icon next to the segment you wish to duplicate.

A new Segment editor will open with the same filter logic as the original segment.

Duplicate segment names are not permitted, so you will be required to populate the Segment Name field with a unique name before being able to save.

Selecting a Segment

In the participant viewer, use the segment drop-down selector to choose which segment to view. You can also choose the default segment for "All Participants." The currently-selected segment is highlighted.

Performing Actions With a Segment

There may be instances where you want to send a survey or notification to a specific segment. For example, you may want to send an enrollment reminder to participants who have not yet enrolled.

You can perform actions on any segment except "All Participants." The following actions are available:

• Send a survey to all participants in the segment.
• Deliver a notification to all participants in the segment.
• Close a survey for all participants in the segment.
• Set a custom field for all participants in the segment.

The example below will send an enrollment reminder to participants' default email address - this can be found under the demographic information for the participant.

There may be instances where you need to send an email notification to additional email addresses, or an SMS notification to additional phone numbers. To accomplish this, first you need to create custom fields with a data type of phone or email. Once the custom fields are defined, you can select them from the dropdown menu next to "Use Custom Field."

Editing or Deleting a Segment

In the segment drop-down window, select the edit icon to edit a segment's name or filter criteria. Select the trash icon to delete a segment.

You cannot edit or delete the "All Participants" segment.

Using Advanced Filter Logic

Advanced filter logic allows you to set up more complicated filter criteria for your segments.

Select the "NOT" button next to any filter criteria to make it into the opposite condition. For example, if the filter criteria is "Gender equals Male" then adding NOT to it will make it select everyone whose gender is not male.

Select the "OR" button to add another criteria where either can be true.

Select the "AND" button to add another criteria where all must be true. The example below will select men who are age 65 and older.

Creating Segments: Examples

The following sections review two practical applications for segments that may be useful for building your study.

1. Creating enrollment reminders for participants
2. Sending notifications based on participant cohort (segment)

Enrollment Reminders

You may wish to send reminder notifications to participants invited to your study but have not yet enrolled. This example reviews creating an email notification, creating a segment, and creating a schedule to notify all participants who were invited to participate over 1 week ago and have an invitation status of pending.

First, create the email notification to send to participants.

Next, define the participant segment. In this scenario, participants were invited to the study by the coordinators, so you can use the Creation Date and Invitation Status criteria to determine if a participant was created in MyDataHelps over a week ago and has a status of pending.

Finally, create a Schedule to send the email reminder to participants on entering this segment. This results in a one-time notification for any participants that were invited over 1 week ago and have an invitation status of pending.

Cohort Based Notifications

You may wish to divide participants into separate cohorts and send notifications based on those assigned cohorts. In this example, participants are assigned to a cohort based on a survey response, and the cohorts are used to determine the frequency of notifications.

• Cohort A receives 0 notifications
• Cohort B receives 1 notification per week
• Cohort C receives notifications every other day

First, create a custom field to store the cohort survey response in.

Once the custom field has been created, create a segment for each cohort (Cohort A example below).

Next, define the survey step in which you will assign the cohort. In this example, participants are placed into a cohort based on their activity level.

Assuming the notification has already been created, the last step is to schedule the notifications for each cohort. Since cohort A will not receive notifications, start by scheduling notifications for cohort B. Cohort B should start receiving notifications 1 week after Enrollment and continue to receive notifications every week for 10 weeks.

Cohort C should start receiving notifications 1 week after Enrollment and continue to receive notifications every other day for 10 weeks.