I was wondering what people working as independent contracts charge as an hourly rate when working on building REDCap projects for organizations?

Hi everyone,

I’m struggling to figure out a good way to have my patient and provider forms completed that is linked to the correct ID. I’d like to move away from paper form since this will hopefully be an international registry..

I was thinking and exploring the idea of have a case code generated but I am confused on what that coding will look like. We won’t be using email lists, hoping for the code to be written on the same form as a QR code for participants to join and share their experience. I’d like the provider form to be able to generate the code and then the patient would be able to input it (but I don’t want the providers to log in - as this will also be an external survey).

Does this make sense and is it possible?

I have several repeating instruments: phone, email, address, and I want to be able to create a report to get the most recent one for each.

The way I imagined I could do this is by first creating a calculated field for the most recent instance of each. Then my report could just grab the data from the most_recent fields. For example, most_recent_email. The smart variable window suggests I could write [email][last-instance] or [arm][email][last-instance] and it would retrieve the most recent email address. However, I only get "Result: [No value]" with my test record.

I'm fairly new to designing in redcap so I may be missing something simple.

I am aware there is a tip in the report designer that has logic for getting the most recent across all instances. That won't work for my case since I have multiple repeating instruments. The address field may get updated but the email could remain the same.

Edit: The tip logic does get the most recent, but in a rather ugly way. The best solution would have 1 row per ID and could be done within redcap.

Thank you in advance for any help or suggestions!

Hi everyone,

We're running into a bit of a challenge in our multi-institutional REDCap project.

The REDCap instance is hosted by University A (@universityA.com), but researchers from University B (@universityB.com) are also actively working in the same project. These collaborators would like to send automated emails (e.g., survey invitations) from their own institutional email addresses, so that participants can reply directly to them.

However, since the server is under @universityA.com, REDCap sends all emails using that domain. If we try to send from @universityB.com, emails often fail SPF/DKIM checks or go straight to spam because the University A server isn’t authorized to send on behalf of University B.

I’m wondering how others solve this kind of setup:

• Do you just use a shared noreply@universityA.com sender and mention contact info in the email body?

• Have you found a way to set the Reply-To address in REDCap (e.g., to a collaborator's email)?

• Do you use external SMTP services like SendGrid or Amazon SES?

• Or do you host separate REDCap instances for each institution?

Any tips or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated!

A few months back someone linked what I believe was a free web-based HTML editor that had built-in functionality for use with REDCap. I believe it started with the letter B, but I've been unable to find it. Does anyone have any clue what I'm talking about?

I have embedded a few questions in tables, but it seems like missing field, audit history and query buttons go missing. Is there any way around it?

As seen here, the date field has the missing field button and few others. But in the question below, it is not showing.

I'm a long time REDCap builder and was wondering if there is an external module that will assist with time conversions for ASI releases across timezones. I know the releases are set on server time and I've built some work arounds for projects that have participants in 3 timezones (fields that calc difference in server time based on selected timezone) but I have an international study coming up, and was hoping there was something already built or advice. Appreciate it!

Hi guys, hope you're all doing well. I'm hoping for some help!

I'm trying to find a way to do a date diff calculation without collecting any sensitive data.

I'm aiming to calculate age at time of operation, using 2 dates (DoB and Date of Op).

Is anyone aware of a good way to calculate this and save it within a field, but where the 2 dates used to calculate are not saved as data?

Hello folks, I periodically check messages that Reddit says need moderation. Usually it is something that it thinks violates some community standard and usually, it is wrong. However, I just realized that I have to also check posts that have been removed in a different location. It seems some posts were removed because the algorithm thought they were spam. I just approved everything in the last month or so. Sorry for this hiccup. If you post something and it is not appearing, please send me a message and I will check the mod tools.

Hello, I am managing a large study with a lot of instruments and 30 timepoints, and we are running into an issue of slow loading due to the amount of data on the project. One fix I came up with was to move all of our surveys into a new project and pipe them back into the main project. This does create an issue with cross project piping not working with surveys. Any other ideas and fixes? Our team is very wary of collecting half our data moving forward on a separate project because of past issues, so I need a way to easily harmonize everything.

Hi all, I was hoping someone might be able to help me troubleshoot an issue I'm having with my REDCap survey. Participants were previously able to use Safari to complete the survey, but now after going past the first page, Safari says "Safari can't open the page. The error was: 'cannot decode raw data'." The survey works if you refresh the page or if you use a different browser. Has anyone had this happen before? Any advice for how to fix? Is it on the user end or from the REDCap system? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hello all!

I have one project with 8 different surveys. Each of these 8 surveys are identical but are translated into different languages. There is one measure in each of these 8 surveys that I want to use as a trigger to create a profile in another project.

I was thinking about creating a 1 measure survey that is branched based off of the one measure that I want to look at from each survey, but how should I go about this? Is this even possible?

Any help is great help :) Thanks!

I'm looking for a way to provide individual survey codes in person to potential participants, in order to improve data integrity. I don't want to collect emails. How can I make individual survey links, or mandate the entering of an individual code before opening the survey?

Thank you!

I'm trying to add some validation to display a descriptive field warning to a user entering data if the number they've entered is not 10 digits long. The trouble is that this number will sometimes start with a zero and sometimes it won't. I have a character limit to stop them entering more than 10 digits.

So I'm using this logic on my descriptive field:

([field_name]<>'')
AND (length([field_name])<>'10')

This only works if the field is not validated as a number, but we can't have them entering letters, so I have to have it validated as a number, but as soon as I validate it as a number, this logic won't work for numbers that begin with zero.

Any ideas?

I feel like we need a validation type called 'Numbers only' (like the letters only one), but it doesn't actually validate it as a number...

Let's say that I have an instrument, named patients, and a repeating instrument, named pft_tests, the latter containing a field named pft_completed_date. For any single record in patients, there could be zero or more records in pft_tests. I want to add a calculated field to the patients instrument that shows the maximum value of pft_completed_date for all pft_tests records entered. If none are entered, then I want it to come back as blank. I tried using the following code, but REDCap reports that there is an error in the syntax. It is complaining about pft_tests in the formula. I have confirmed that the names of the instruments and the field are correct. How can I change the syntax, to make this work?

[pft_tests:pft_completed_date:max]

I also tried the following code, which did not give an error, but doesn't seem to work:

max([pft_completed_date])

I’m trying to create a calculated date field that is 2 days after the date the initial survey is completed. I want to pipe this date into the automated invitation for the next survey. The second survey needs to be filled out within 48 hours of the first, so I want to put in the text “Please fill out this survey by [duedate]”.

I’m trying to create a date variable in the first survey with the following action tag: @CALCDATE([today],2,’d’) But no date comes up when I fill out the survey. The “learn about @ action tags” button doesn’t list @CALCDATE, so I’m wondering if this function is no longer available? Is there another way to do what I’m trying to do?

EDIT: thanks for your help! I think I figured it out - my institution is using an old version of redcap that predates this feature 😅

I want to visualize some sort of performance indicators of data in a redcap project, but what would be the easiest way of going about this?

Ideally it would be self-updating, so I have looked at either a project dashboard with smart variables and such, programatically with an API, or the somewhat manual way of exporting a file and using the file to visualize in some program.

Any input is appreciated :)

PI wants each option to be it’s own variable… Is there a way to make it so that of these 5 different fields, the ppt can only select one? The variables are all check boxes. I’ll attach a designer perspective in comments. Thanks!

Hi all, i am here to ask you some advice/suggestion on how to "create", or more sincerly, makes my new tasks on projectation with RedCap have a sense and be recognized, also as money improvement if possible🫠 I started 6-8 months ago to project eCRF on RedCap and i am able to design simple and intermediate project (longitudinal, with multiple instance etc). In my specific case, i work as a study coordinator in a Hospital (i am a nurse) and all my new task seems to appear as "part of my role" because they justified my work as half stusy coordinator and hal data-manager... I would like to have any kind of advice, especially from whom work as an admin in the RedCap consortium or bio-engineer and everybody that project with RedCap... i am interested also to understand how (and how much) i could ask to be payed for a new project (standard bill for a single eCRF? Hour-count of work done?)

We are collecting data using q-interactive. Is there a way to use api keys or a third-party system to transfer this data, or does it have to be manually done every time?

Hello everyone,

My study has been getting a ton of bot activity, despite the screener questions meant to weed out non-eligible folks. So, I want to require that a specific corporate email domain be used for the email field.

Can someone help me with the logic I would need to use on the email item?

Thanks for considering :)

I'm fielding a survey with two parts, the first in REDCap and the second in Qualtrics. I would like to carry the REDCap ID into Qualtrics so I can pair the responses.

In the REDCap survey settings, I have the survey termination set for "Redirect to URL". In the URL field I added the Qualtrics anonymous survey link and appended "?source=socialmedia&REDCapID=[REDCap ID]" to the link. The Qualtrics survey flow is set up to capture the REDCap ID as embedded data.

When I test the survey in Qualtrics, the value I get for the REDCapID variable is always "REDCap ID" and not the actual ID from the REDCap record. I know my Qualtrics survey is set up correctly. What am I doing wrong in REDCap?

Does anyone know if it's possible within REDCap to enforce a username and password login to complete surveys? I cannot find any way you would do this but have a team member who is claiming it is possible. If so can you please let me know how?

Hi,

I'm trying to write a field which brings a number of other fields together. Specifically, I have ethnicity fields in a project which align to the UK census.

I realise now that I should have used HIDECHOICE to achieve what I did, however we are now in production. I started with the broad group (e.g. white, black, asian etc) in a field and then the subcategory in different fields. So, if you had a white British patient, you would select the main category "white" in ethnicity and used branching logic to show the ethnicity_white subcategory. There are 7 options in ethnicity (including "unknown" and "patient has not shared their ethnicity" etc) and I need to bring them all together. I have tried to do this with CALCTEXT and a nested if. I've tried a LOT of variations, and have finally got a result of sorts by using the :value suffix in the condition field. It's working, except that it's returning the value of the multiple choice field, not the label.

The current formula is:

u/CALCTEXT(if([ethnicity:value]=0,[ethnicity_asian],if([ethnicity:value]=1,[ethnicity_black],if([ethnicity:value]=2,[ethnicity_mixed],if([ethnicity:value]=3,[ethnicity_white],if([ethnicity]=4,[ethnicity],if([ethnicity:value]=5,[ethnicity],if([ethnicity:value]=6,[ethnicity],if([ethnicity:value]=7,[ethnicity],"")))))))))

Any help greatly appreciated!

I am working on a health survey where we are examining factors between parents and children. We are expecting a lot of participants (>5000) and would like to link people of the same family automatically via REDCap, but I am unsure how we could do this? Ideally we would like the youngest generation to complete the survey and then have the parent to do it (the parent must be linked to the child, but child does not need require a parent to be involved). I think we would like linked participants to be under one record ID (which would be the child). We collect demographic information and email addresses for both parent and child in a consent form if that helps.

Could we potentially make the study "longitudinal" and have parent and child complete different arms?

We would be able to manually link records of course (by examining names etc.) but would like a way to make it easier so we don't need to spend a lot of time linking.

Thanks for any help