ExpiWell: Rolling Schedule for EMA and ESM

Rolling Schedule for EMA and ESM

The rolling schedule allows you schedule your ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and experience sampling method (ESM) surveys based on when your participants start the project. We recommend using this when you want to have a flexible start date for participants. This often occurs when you have participants join on a rolling basis.

Schedule Type


Unlike the calendar schedule which ties the surveys to specific calendar dates, researcher may seek to collect the same time length data from participants regardless of when participants start the project. The "Rolling Schedule" helps researchers to schedule and collect, for example, 2 weeks worth of data from participants, beginning whenever the participant starts the project.

When you choose the rolling schedule, you will see the rolling schedule layout that comprises of weeks (Wk.) and days (1-7) as shown below.



Rolling Scheduler



To schedule your surveys, simply drag the survey into the desired day and then choose window times. In the example below, the survey starts on the first day when participants add the project.

Rolling schedule survey open and close



"Week 1, Day 1" refers to when a participant enters the access code to start the project on their mobile device. Therefore, if a survey begins on "Week 1, Day 1" (where the "Start" is on the scheduler), a participant starts receiving notifications to take surveys on the same day.


It is possible for participants to miss surveys if they start the project past the time slot of the survey. For example, if a researcher sets a survey time slot to 9am-10am on Week 1, Day 1, a participant entering the access code and starting the project at 11am will miss the first survey time slot from 9am-10am.

If there is concern that participants add the project at a later time on the first day and miss the first survey day, we recommend that researchers start the project on Week 1, Day 2.


Flexible Start Date

For the rolling schedule, you can further personalize when participants want to start their project. There may be several reasons for this choice.
  1. It provides flexibility to participants to choose when they want to start the project - and not just when they add the project to the ExpiWell app
  2. This is useful if you are interested in having participants start on a specific day of the week (e.g., Monday). When you onboard participants, you can have them add the project then and request that they choose to start it on the specific day of the week (e.g., Monday).
The toggle for "Flexible Start Date" is shown below.

Flexible start date toggle



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