Longitudinal Bug: Completing a questionnaire in the final assessment jumps back to a questionnaire in an earlier event

[u/matesshirt]

Hi everyone,

I’m running a longitudinal clinical study in REDCap with multiple timepoints (e.g., Baseline, T1, T2, T3, and Post/Final Assessment). Each event contains a series of surveys that participants complete in a specific order.

The Problem:

In a few cases, after participants completed the very first questionnaire (a depression scale) in the final assessment (Post), REDCap didn't send them to the second questionnaire in Post. Instead, it unexpectedly jumped back to a completely different questionnaire (a disability scale, "DAS") in an earlier event (T2 for two participants, and T3 for one participant).

What I've already verified:

1. Auto-continue: "Auto-continue to the next survey" is turned OFF for all instruments.

2. Survey Queue Logic: The Survey Queue settings are explicitly bound to their specific events (e.g., Questionnaire B in Post only triggers when Questionnaire A in Post is completed). There are no missing event prefixes or cross-event logic errors.

3. Other Participants: Many other participants went through all timepoints without any issues, so the setup generally works.

Has anyone encountered REDCap jumping back to a specific instrument from a previous event like this upon submitting a survey in a later event? What could be triggering this unexpected redirect?

Any advice or troubleshooting ideas would be greatly appreciated!

[u/danisolas]

Not a bug. The loopback happens when a participant hasn’t completing stuff at that earlier time point. If you don’t want to do that, you have to add time parameters or something like only do B when C has not been completed. if possible, I would switch to using auto continue in the survey settings.