El Dahr Yola, Perquier Florence, Moloney Madison, Woo Guyyunge, Dobrin-De Grace Roksana, Carvalho Daniela, Addario Nicole, Cameron Emily E, Roos Leslie E, Szatmari Peter, Aitken Madison
Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Faculty of Arts & Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
JMIR Form Res. 2023 Nov 9;7:e42916. doi: 10.2196/42916.
Intensive longitudinal data collection, including ecological momentary assessment (EMA), has the potential to reduce recall biases, collect more ecologically valid data, and increase our understanding of dynamic associations between variables. EMA is typically administered using an application that is downloaded on participants' devices, which presents cost and privacy concerns that may limit its use. Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap), a web-based survey application freely available to nonprofit organizations, may allow researchers to overcome these barriers; however, at present, little guidance is available to researchers regarding the setup of EMA in REDCap, especially for those who are new to using REDCap or lack advanced programming expertise.
We provide an example of a simplified EMA setup in REDCap. This study aims to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. We provide information on survey completion and user behavior in a sample of parents and children recruited across Canada.
We recruited 66 parents and their children (aged 9-13 years old) from an existing longitudinal cohort study to participate in a study on risk and protective factors for children's mental health. Parents received survey prompts (morning and evening) by email or SMS text message for 14 days, twice daily. Each survey prompt contained 2 sections, one for parents and one for children to complete.
The completion rates were good (mean 82%, SD 8%) and significantly higher on weekdays than weekends and in dyads with girls than dyads with boys. Children were available to respond to their own survey questions most of the time (in 1134/1498, 75.7% of surveys submitted). The number of assessments submitted was significantly higher, and response times were significantly faster among participants who selected SMS text message survey notifications compared to email survey notifications. The average response time was 47.0 minutes after the initial survey notification, and the use of reminder messages increased survey completion.
Our results support the feasibility of using REDCap for EMA studies with parents and children. REDCap also has features that can accommodate EMA studies by recruiting participants across multiple time zones and providing different survey delivery methods. Offering the option of SMS text message survey notifications and reminders may be an important way to increase completion rates and the timeliness of responses. REDCap is a potentially useful tool for researchers wishing to implement EMA in settings in which cost or privacy are current barriers. Researchers should weigh these benefits with the potential limitations of REDCap and this design, including staff time to set up, monitor, and clean the data outputs of the project.
密集纵向数据收集，包括生态瞬时评估（EMA），有潜力减少回忆偏差，收集更具生态效度的数据，并增进我们对变量间动态关联的理解。EMA通常通过在参与者设备上下载的应用程序进行管理，这带来了成本和隐私方面的担忧，可能会限制其使用。研究电子数据采集（REDCap）是一个可供非营利组织免费使用的基于网络的调查应用程序，可能使研究人员能够克服这些障碍；然而，目前对于研究人员在REDCap中设置EMA的指导很少，尤其是对于那些刚开始使用REDCap或缺乏高级编程专业知识的人。
我们提供一个在REDCap中简化EMA设置的示例。本研究旨在证明这种方法的可行性。我们提供了在加拿大招募的一组家长和孩子样本中调查完成情况和用户行为的信息。
我们从现有的纵向队列研究中招募了66名家长及其孩子（9至13岁），以参与一项关于儿童心理健康风险和保护因素的研究。家长在14天内每天通过电子邮件或短信收到两次调查提示（早上和晚上）。每个调查提示包含两个部分，一个供家长完成，一个供孩子完成。
完成率良好（平均82%，标准差8%），工作日的完成率显著高于周末，女孩组的完成率显著高于男孩组。孩子们大多数时候都能对自己的调查问卷做出回应（在1134/1498份提交的调查中，占75.7%）。与通过电子邮件接收调查通知的参与者相比，选择短信调查通知的参与者提交的评估数量显著更高，响应时间也显著更快。初始调查通知发出后平均响应时间为47.0分钟，使用提醒信息提高了调查完成率。
我们的结果支持在家长和孩子的EMA研究中使用REDCap的可行性。REDCap还具有一些功能，可以通过在多个时区招募参与者并提供不同的调查交付方式来适应EMA研究。提供短信调查通知和提醒的选项可能是提高完成率和响应及时性的重要方式。对于希望在成本或隐私成为当前障碍的环境中实施EMA的研究人员来说，REDCap是一个潜在有用的工具。研究人员应权衡这些好处与REDCap及此设计的潜在局限性，包括设置、监控和清理项目数据输出所需的工作人员时间。
