Calendar Schedule for EMA and ESM

The calendar schedule allows you schedule your ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and experience sampling method (ESM) surveys based on calendar dates.

Scheduling

When you have selected the calendar schedule, you will see the calendar layout as shown below.

You can find your surveys on the left side, and you can drag the survey to the specific date. In this case, "Student Check-In" survey to the Friday on November 3rd, 2023.

Open/Close Survey

Edit the desired timing of the survey. In the example below, it is set to 12 A.M. - 11:59 P.M. 

This will automatically send a mobile app notification to participants at 12 A.M. to inform participants that the "Survey" is available for them to take. The survey is available until 11:59 P.M., after which participants will not be able to take the survey.

You can also toggle 'Make Survey Static', and this survey will always be available until a specific date, which you can set. In this example, until November 7, 2023.  You also have an option to let participants respond one time or multiple times.

This is helpful as a researchers may also seek to schedule one-time surveys (e.g., a demographic survey) or an event-triggered or event-based survey (e.g., filling in a survey immediately after a participant talks with a friend).

Options

Please see detailed explanation below.

Randomize notifications: The default setting is that mobile app notifications will always be sent out at the beginning of the time slot.

Toggling the randomization option does three things: 

• Randomize the notification within the time slot. The randomization is also individualized across all participants.
• Closes the survey from when the notification is sent (default is 5 minutes but can be adjusted; e.g., 20 minutes)
• Shows that the initial notification will be sent between the open and close window times, minus the minutes you allowed your participants to respond.

Fixed reminder: Toggling this option sends a reminder notification to the participant if they have not yet responded to the survey. You can customize response time.

Snooze reminder: This works like an alarm clock, where participants can re-snooze at a later time. (available options for participants to re-snooze is 15 and 30 minutes)

Survey repeat: One can create repeats of the "Survey" across days by also using the "Repeat Survey" toggle in the "Options" tab. One can decide the frequency of the repeat and also the date to repeat it. Selecting the date will repeat the survey until the date is reached. This change will be reflected in the calendar..

Repeating Surveys Across Times in a Day: One can also repeat the same survey across times in a day by dragging the survey to the date and setting the appropriate time slot.

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