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VIEWS: 26 PAGES: 109 CATEGORY: Computers & Internet POSTED ON: 8/24/2011 Public Domain
Instructor Guide to SONA SYSTEMS Instructor Guide to SONA Systems INSTRUCTOR DOCUMENTATION.............................................................................. 83 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 83 Getting Started................................................................................................................... 83 Logging In ......................................................................................................................... 83 Course Reports .................................................................................................................. 84 4 Granting Credits ............................................................................................................ 85 Viewing Studies ................................................................................................................ 86 Changing Your Password.................................................................................................. 86 Logging Out ...................................................................................................................... 87 ADMINISTRATOR DOCUMENTATION...................................................................... 88 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 88 Getting Started............................................................................................................... 88 Typical Administrator Tasks............................................................................................. 89 Start-of-Term Tasks ...................................................................................................... 89 Ongoing Tasks............................................................................................................... 90 End-of-Term Tasks ....................................................................................................... 90 General User Notes ........................................................................................................... 90 User IDs......................................................................................................................... 90 Duplicate User IDs – Users with Multiple Roles...................................................... 90 Emails and User IDs.................................................................................................. 91 Participant Unique ID Codes......................................................................................... 92 Importing Users................................................................................................................. 92 Preparation Tasks .......................................................................................................... 93 Definitive List Import Option ....................................................................................... 93 Performing the Import................................................................................................... 94 Adding and Editing Users ............................................................................................... 100 Overview ..................................................................................................................... 100 Finding Users .............................................................................................................. 101 Editing Users ............................................................................................................... 101 Adding Users............................................................................................................... 103 Deleting Users ............................................................................................................. 105 Login Days Tracking................................................................................................... 106 Limiting a Participant's Access to the System............................................................ 107 Removing a User's Access to the System................................................................... 107 New Participant Account Message ............................................................................. 107 Bulk Email Usage........................................................................................................ 108 Principal Investigator (P.I.) Accounts ......................................................................... 108 Principal Investigator Timeslot Usage Limit .......................................................... 108 Researcher Accounts ................................................................................................... 108 Researcher Timeslot Usage Limit ........................................................................... 109 Administrator Accounts .............................................................................................. 109 Participant Account Self-Creation .................................................................................. 110 Overview ..................................................................................................................... 110 Automatic Account Approval ..................................................................................... 111 Approving Accounts ................................................................................................... 111 Online Prescreening ........................................................................................................ 112 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 112 Privacy Protections...................................................................................................... 114 Prescreen Participation Credits ................................................................................... 114 Creating or Modifying a Prescreen ............................................................................. 115 General Prescreen Information................................................................................ 115 5 Section List.............................................................................................................. 118 Adding or Modifying a Section............................................................................... 119 Adding or Editing a Question.................................................................................. 120 Copying a Section ................................................................................................... 123 Copying a Question................................................................................................. 123 Saving Your Changes.............................................................................................. 124 Viewing the Prescreen as a Participant ................................................................... 124 Admin Section............................................................................................................. 125 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 125 Creating the Admin Section .................................................................................... 125 Inserting Responses into the Admin Section........................................................... 126 Download Prescreen Response Data........................................................................... 126 Deleting a Prescreen.................................................................................................... 126 Generating Reports.......................................................................................................... 127 Overview ..................................................................................................................... 127 Credit Completion Reports ......................................................................................... 127 No-Show Reports ........................................................................................................ 128 Unassigned Credit Reports.......................................................................................... 129 Time Usage Reports .................................................................................................... 129 Study Attendance Reports........................................................................................... 129 Credit Usage Report .................................................................................................... 129 Study Schedule Report ................................................................................................ 130 System Summary Report............................................................................................. 130 Mass Email Report ...................................................................................................... 130 Prescreen Status Reports ............................................................................................. 131 Course Credit History Report...................................................................................... 131 Duplicate Participant Report ....................................................................................... 132 Emailing a Group of Users.............................................................................................. 132 Nightly Reminder Emails............................................................................................ 134 Email Security Codes .................................................................................................. 135 Batch Operations ............................................................................................................. 135 Granting Non-Study Credit ............................................................................................. 136 Course Maintenance........................................................................................................ 137 Location Maintenance and Scheduling ........................................................................... 139 End-of-Semester Maintenance ........................................................................................ 140 Exporting Data ............................................................................................................ 141 Clearing Out Old Data................................................................................................. 142 Basic End-of-Semester Maintenance ...................................................................... 143 Advanced End-of-Semester Maintenance............................................................... 147 Monitoring Studies.......................................................................................................... 150 Checking Study Configuration.................................................................................... 151 Batch Study Updates ................................................................................................... 151 Batch Study Deletion .................................................................................................. 152 Updating System Text..................................................................................................... 153 Frequently Asked Questions Feature .............................................................................. 154 Requesting Technical Support ........................................................................................ 155 6 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)................................................................................ 156 System Settings ............................................................................................................... 158 Settings That You May Change at Any Time ............................................................. 158 Settings That May Only Be Changed when the System is Empty.............................. 172 No-Show Handling.......................................................................................................... 180 Security Considerations................................................................................................... 181 Passwords .................................................................................................................... 181 Data Transmission....................................................................................................... 182 System Limits.................................................................................................................. 183 Data Limits.................................................................................................................. 183 Foreign Language Support .......................................................................................... 183 Accessibility Information................................................................................................ 184 Regulatory Compliance................................................................................................... 184 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 184 No-Show Penalties ...................................................................................................... 185 Handling an Information Request ............................................................................... 186 Data Handling and Security Guidelines ...................................................................... 186 Strict IRB Mode .......................................................................................................... 186 Human Subjects/Privacy Policy Acknowledgment .................................................... 187 7 INSTRUCTOR DOCUMENTATION Introduction The Experiment Management System is used for the scheduling and management of a human subject pool. As an instructor, your interaction with the system will be minimal, but also painless. Your primary use of the system will be to check on the credit status of students (participants) in your courses, though in some cases you may also have the ability to grant credits to your students, as well as view which studies are available to students. Getting Started The system works best if you use a web browser that is less than 2 years old. It works well with all recent versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. It will work with other web browsers, and with older versions popular browsers, however the layout may not be as clean. No functionality will be lost by using an older web browser. Ask your IT department if you need help with installing or using a web browser. This documentation assumes you have a basic knowledge of how to use the web. On this system, it is not necessary to use the Back button. You can always use the toolbar on the top to navigate anywhere on the site. Logging In To login, go to the front page of the site (you will be given the URL by a member of your organization) and type in your username and password. If you have forgotten your password and the system is configured to allow password retrieval, you will see a link where you may choose to have your password emailed to you. Once you login, you will be presented with a Main Menu with a few options. 83 Figure 37 - Main Menu Course Reports On the Main Menu that you see after logging in, you will see an option to generate course reports. Once you click on that, you will see a list of all the courses you are listed as an instructor for, and you have the option to generate reports for each of those courses. Figure 38 - Course Listing You have 3 choices for the type of report you would like to generate. All Participants will list all participants in the course. Completed Participants will list only participants who have met or exceeded their credit requirements. Incomplete Participants will list only 84 participants who have not met their credit requirements. Click the link for the desired report. The report will be listed in alphabetical order by a participant's last name, and participants that have not completed their requirements will be highlighted in bold. For privacy and research ethics reasons, you will never see exactly which studies the students participated in – only a summary of their credit earnings. If for some reason this information is needed, the administrator can produce such a report for you using the Course Credit History report available to them. If your system is configured as such, you will see a credit status for the participant overall, as well as for the listed course. If this is the case, you should look at a participant's credit for the course to determine if they have completed their requirements. If you do not see such a column ("Credits Earned for Course"), then you only need to be concerned with the overall credit completion status for the participant. If the report is too wide to be printed easily, you can use the Printer-Friendly format. A link to that will appear at the bottom of the report. The report also includes a column indicating the Overall Unexcused No-Shows a participant has accrued. If you have a policy whereby you give some type of bonus for participants who do not accrue any unexcused no-shows, then use this column to determine which participants fit into that category (look for values of 0). If you would prefer to deal with the information in CSV (comma-separated) format (for easy import into a spreadsheet program like Excel), use the CSV link at the bottom of the report to generate such a data file. If you have problem working with the CSV format file, please contact your IT department for assistance – CSV is a standard data format and they be quite familiar with it. To generate a new report, choose the Main Menu link from the left toolbar and proceed from there. Granting Credits In some cases, you might see a Grant Credit choice next to each name when you generate a course report. If you click on this link, you can grant a non-study credit grant to that student. This is useful if you are in charge of granting a student credit for participation in a research alternative (e.g., writing a paper), in lieu of actual research participation. To grant the credit, simply enter the credit value and a comment about the credit grant, and the credit will be granted immediately. If you grant a credit by mistake and would like to delete it, please contact the administrator and they can do this for you. 85 Figure 39 - Non-Study Credit Grant Viewing Studies In some cases, you may have the ability to view what studies are available in the system (to students). This is useful if you want to discuss information or concepts from those studies in class, as a part of the educational experience. If such an option is available, you will see an All Studies link after you login. If you click this, you will see a list of studies, and you may then click on any study to view more about it. For privacy reasons, you may not see who has signed up for any of the studies. Figure 40 - Viewing Studies Changing Your Password To change your password or other information, choose the My Profile choice from the toolbar. Fields marked with (+) are optional and do not need to be filled out. 86 If you change your password, please be sure to select a password you do not use on any other systems or websites. This is good computing practice, and especially important as in some cases, your password may be sent over email. Figure 41 - Updating Your Profile In situations where the system is configured so you may enter an email address on this page, you will be asked to enter it twice when changing the address, to ensure it is typed correctly. Logging Out When you are done using the system, choose Logout from the top toolbar to log out. You are now logged out. It is always a good security measure to close all your browser windows as well, especially if you are using a computer that is shared by others. 87 ADMINISTRATOR DOCUMENTATION Introduction As an administrator, you will need to perform many tasks that only an administrator has the rights to perform. Though the number of tasks may seem daunting at first, you will quickly realize that everything is rather straightforward, and should take a minimal amount of your time. For your convenience, we have included a section of Typical Administrator Tasks to get you up and running quickly, while tasks are further detailed later on in the documentation. It is assumed your system has already been setup with your organization's configuration specifications, as a result of a consultation with a Sona Systems representative. Details of the configuration settings are provided later in the documentation (see System Settings). Getting Started As an administrator, you were provided with a login and password to access the system, as well as a URL (web address). To login, you should go to the specified URL by typing it into your web browser. It is recommended that you use any popular web browser produced in the last 2 years, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. The software will work with older web browsers, though the layout and display might not be as streamlined. Figure 42 - Login Page You will note from the front page of the site that a login is required. It is required of every user in the system. The system menus and features adjust based on the privileges and type of user that is logged in. As an administrator, you will note that your menu of choices is much larger than a participant's menu, for example. 88 Figure 43 - Administrator Main Menu After you log in, the first step is to secure your password. You may have been given a default password to login. Choose Update My Profile to change your password and other information. It is strongly recommended you change the password to a secure password you can easily remember, but is hard for others to guess. A secure password contains at least 8 characters, and is a combination of letters and numbers. Do not disclose this password to others, as Administrator accounts have full privileges throughout the system and thus are very powerful. Typical Administrator Tasks Each of the tasks listed below is documented in this manual. This list is intended to give you an idea of the tasks you might generally perform at various times during the term. See the appropriate section of this documentation for more information. Start-of-Term Tasks • Set up courses for the upcoming term, and make old courses non-Selectable, if necessary. See Course Maintenance. • Set up locations (rooms) in the system, if location scheduling is enabled. See Location Maintenance. • Import or add users into the system. This may not be necessary for participant accounts if you have Participant Account Self-Creation enabled (see Participant Account Self-Creation). You will need to add or import users of other types (researchers, instructors, principal investigators) if they do not already have accounts. See Importing Users, and Adding and Editing Users. • Update the System Announcement with any new information, if necessary. See Updating the System Announcement. 89 • Set up an online prescreen, if applicable (see Online Prescreens). Ongoing Tasks • Approve users, if Participant Account Self-Creation is enabled and Automatic Account Approval is disabled. See Approving Accounts. • Monitor studies, if necessary. This may include approving new or changed studies, and updating study timeslot usage quotas. See Monitoring Studies. End-of-Term Tasks • View reports on participant completion. See Generating Reports. • Clear out and export data in preparation for the new term. See End-of-Semester Maintenance. General User Notes There are 5 types of users supported by the software: Administrator, Participant, Instructor, Researcher, and Principal Investigator (when enabled). All users must login to use the system, and privileges and features vary based on the user type. User IDs While all accounts and user types are treated separately, it is important to note that the user ID must be unique across all types of users. For example, if there is a participant with the user ID "jsmith", then there cannot be a researcher with the same user ID. Usually, schools choose to use a school-wide user ID for the user ID, and this is often derived from the email address. For instance, if all users at Acme University have an email address of "username"@acme.edu, then that convention for user IDs is unique (there cannot be two users with the same username @acme.edu), and a good scheme to use. In this example, a user with the email address "email@example.com" should use the user ID "jsmith" on the system. The user ID and password combination is unique to this system, so users can choose to use the same password they use on other systems (like their email system) or a different password. The system can also automatically generate a random, secure password for users, which they can change if desired. If you do not have a common domain (@ suffix), which usually occurs when inviting members from the community at large to participate in your research, you may leave the "@ Suffix" setting (see System Settings) blank. In that case, users can choose any user ID, but they will also be required to provide an email address so the system may contact them when necessary. Duplicate User IDs – Users with Multiple Roles There may be a case where you try to add a user whose user ID is already taken. Most likely, this situation occurs when a person has more than one role in the system, such as a person who is both an Researcher and an Administrator. 90 Because the system does not allow for duplicate user IDs, the simple solution is to create 2 accounts with slightly different user IDs. If the user's researcher account is "jsmith", for example, then you could create a separate administrator account for that user with the ID "jsmith_administrator", assuming "jsmith_administrator" isn't an otherwise legitimate (and taken) user ID. If you go this route, be sure to add an alternate email address for the account with the "illegitimate" user ID, or automatically-generated emails to this user (from the system) will have delivery problems. See the section on Emails and User IDs for more information. If you have provided an empty "@ Suffix" (see System Settings), then you can use any user ID that is not unique. In this situation, the system will prevent two participants requesting accounts from providing the same email address. In the case of an administrator who is creating accounts, it will merely a warning, but will allow it. There is usually a good reason more than one account has the same email address, usually when the same person has two accounts because they perform 2 different roles. The system will list the type of user the person is logged in as in the top left corner of every page (after they have logged in), so they will not forget what type of user account they are using at the moment. Emails and User IDs If the "@ Suffix" is provided (see System Settings), which it is in most systems, then the user ID is typically derived from the user's university email address. The user ID is also used when email needs to be sent from the system to the user. Typical emails that are sent include credit notification and study sign-up confirmation emails (when enabled). When sending an email, the system will first see if the user has provided an alternate email address. If this exists, it will be used. The user can add or modify their alternate email address from the "Update My Profile" link on the Main Menu after login. It can also be provided when an administrator creates the account through a data import or the Add User form. If an alternate email address is not on file, the system will send an email to the address created by taking the user's user ID and appending @ and the "@ suffix" to the end of it. As an example, for the user ID "jsmith" and an @ suffix of "acme.edu", the email would be sent to "email@example.com". The @ suffix is specified in System Settings. If the "@ Suffix" is blank (see System Settings), then the system will always send to the email address provided by the user (in this situation, it is listed simply as the "Email Address" and not "Alternate Email Address", since it is mandatory when configured this way). The alternate email address feature may be disabled for participants, with the "Enable Alt. Email" system setting (see System Settings). 91 Participant Unique ID Codes If enabled (see System Settings), participants may be identified to researchers only by a unique, numeric ID code, or by only their first name. One of these options is generally desirable when protecting a participant's privacy is very important. The system will automatically generate a numeric ID code for each participant, and they will be reminded of this ID code in any email communication generated from the system to participants (e.g. study reminder emails). Their ID code is also listed on their profile page for easy reference. Participants continue to login with their normal username, not their ID code. The ID code is the same for the participant across all studies they sign up for. Researchers only see a participant's ID code, and not their name or email address. Instructors see only the participant's names (not ID codes), as this information is necessary to link the participant to their course for proper crediting. Administrators have access to both a participant's ID code and name, as this information is necessary when performing routine maintenance tasks. Because of this, the administrator should be careful when handling this sensitive information. You should consult with your IRB about this feature. Many regulations governing human subject research require that Unique ID codes are used. If you do not require this high level of privacy, it may be acceptable to choose the option where participants are identified to researchers by only their first name. This makes it easier to take attendance of who arrived for an appointment, while still offering some level of privacy. Importing Users The system features a method for bulk importing a set of user accounts, known as the User Import Wizard. You may use this feature to import Participant, Researcher, Instructor, or Principal Investigator (when enabled) accounts. Administrator accounts cannot be imported through the Import Wizard. See Adding and Editing Users for information on adding Administrator accounts. The methods for adding users into the system are not mutually exclusive. For instance, you can add a set of participants through the Import Wizard, while still enabling the Participant Account Self-Creation feature. The system will automatically prevent duplicate user entries by verifying that a user ID is not taken when an attempt to create the account is made. If a user ID already exists in the system, but the account was deactivated (not allowed to login to the system), then their account will be reactivated when doing the user import. 92 Preparation Tasks The Import Wizard is a multi-step process. You should run only one import at a time, and you should have your data file ready when you start the import. The system will expire your login session after a period of inactivity (the exact period is listed on the first page of the Import Wizard, but it is usually around 20 minutes), so it is important to move through the process with this timeout period in mind. In addition, the system may take a few moments to process your import file, so please be patient as you go through the steps. If you receive a timeout error when performing the import (typically after Step 4), then you have probably pasted in too many rows of data. Try to reduce the number of rows and try again – you can run the import more than once per course. A general guideline to use is to import only 100-200 users at a time, though you are welcome to try with larger numbers to see if it will work. The Import Wizard expects you to have a text file in comma-separated (CSV) format. Most institutions receive course rosters from the registrar or SIS as an Excel spreadsheet. Once you receive the data in this format, you should clean up or make changes to the data directly in the spreadsheet, as it is the easiest method for data cleanup. Once you have prepared the data, choose the Save As.. feature in Excel to save the file as a comma- separated file. The Import Wizard generally expects each data item to be surrounded by "quotes" and each item to be separated by a comma. If you use a program like Excel to generate the CSV file, all fields may not necessarily be surrounded by quotes. This may be acceptable – go through the import process and the system will notify you if there was a problem with the format. The system is quite flexible in dealing with poorly-formatted CSV data. Only one user record should appear on each line. The fields may appear in any order as long as it is consistent throughout the file. Step 2 of the Import Wizard allows you to list which fields are contained in your import file. Figure 44 - Excel CSV Save As Feature Definitive List Import Option When importing participant accounts (this option only applies to participant accounts), there will be a Definitive List choice on Step 2 of the import process. If selected, the system will assume that the list of participants you provide in Step 4 is the definitive list 93 for the course specified. What this means is that any participants who were already in that course (but not in the list you are importing) will be removed from that course. This is a good way to handle course add/drops at a later date, however care should be taken as it can result in participants being removed from the course. As this option results in moving participants into and out of certain courses, this may cause their credit requirements (which are based on which courses they are in) to be recomputed. If you have the system configured to assess no-show penalties, and the penalties are added to credit requirements, then this may result in the credit requirements being recomputed incorrectly, as accrued penalties (or manual credit requirement adjustments by the administrator) are not taken into account. If your site is configured this way, the system will give a warning to make you aware of this. In short, here is what the system will do when you use the definitive list option: • If the participant is in the list you specified, and is already in the course, they will remain in the course. • If the participant is in the list you specified, and they are not in the course, they will be added to the course. They will not be removed from any other courses they were already in. • If the participant is not in the list you specified, but they are in the course, then they will be removed from the course. They will not be removed from any other courses they are in, and their account will not be removed. If they were only in this course (so the result is that they will be in no courses after the import is complete), then they will be asked to select a course upon their next login, from the list of courses marked Selectable in Course Listings. In general, as the Definitive List feature can result in participants being removed from a course, we recommend only advanced users make use of this option. If you are unsure, it's better not to use this feature. Performing the Import Start the user import by choosing Get/Remove Data then Data Import, while logged in as an Administrator. If there was an existing import from before that was never fully completed, you will be given the opportunity to delete the import in progress or resume it. 94 Figure 45 - Import Wizard Step 1 When you start a new import, you must first choose what type of users you would like to import. If you are importing participants, you must also choose what course the participants are in. The system will usually remember the settings you chose for the last import (fields, field ordering), so the process is likely to go very quickly if you are doing multiple imports. Listed below is a table of the fields and which user types they apply to, as well as any restrictions about the fields. Field Name Applies To Comments First Name All Users Required. Maximum length: 50 characters. Last Name All Users Required. Maximum length: 50 characters. User ID All Users Required. Must be unique in the system. Maximum length: 30 characters. Do not include the @ suffix (e.g. "@yourschool.edu"). Password All Users Optional. Maximum length: 20 characters. If this is not included, the system will generate a random password for each user. University ID Number All Users Optional. Maximum length: 20 characters. This option will not appear if importing participants and the Student ID Deactivation setting is on (see System Settings). If you are importing participant accounts, and the system is 95 configured so that university ID numbers are required and must be unique, then the system will reject participants where the university ID specified in the import is already used by another participant in the system. Phone Number All Users Optional. Maximum length: 20 characters. Alternate Email Address All Users Optional if "@ Suffix" is provided, Required if "@ Suffix" is empty (see System Settings). Maximum length: 100 characters. Course Participants This is selected during the import, and should not be included in your import file. You may import only one course at a time, for system performance reasons. Office Location Researchers, PIs, Optional. Maximum length: 50 Instructors characters. In Step 2 of the Import Wizard, you will be asked to choose which fields you will be importing. Only the required fields must be provided in your import file. Figure 46 - Import Wizard Step 2 Once you select the fields you will be providing in your import file, you should choose the order as they are listed (left-to-right) in your import file. On this Step 3 page, you should type in the number next to each field corresponding to the order in the file (1 for the first field, 2 for the second field, and so on). It is very important that you use every 96 number once and only once. Duplication of numbers may cause unexpected problems during the import. Figure 47 - Import Wizard Step 3 After choosing the order for the fields, you will proceed to Step 4 of the import process, where you paste in the contents of your import file. The easiest way to do this is to open up the file in a text editor like Notepad (Notepad is a program on Windows computers, and is found in the Start | Programs | Accessories menu). Make sure to turn off the Word Wrap feature on Notepad after opening the file with Notepad. Copy the appropriate lines of the file and paste them into the provided area in the Import Wizard. Do not include any header lines which describe the field names – just the data is necessary. Microsoft Word is not a good tool to use when dealing with CSV data, because it might try to include some formatting options of its own. 97 Figure 48 - Import Wizard Step 4 After you paste in the appropriate information, click Continue to proceed. Note it may take a few moments to process the import file. The Import Wizard is busy processing your import and checking for any errors in the data. You will see a resulting page (Step 5) that lists the data as the system was able to read it. Any records with problems will be highlighted in yellow, and the problem(s) will be identified. At this point, you can choose to re-paste the import, proceed, or cancel. 98 Figure 49 - Import Wizard Step 5 If you choose to proceed, you have two options depending on whether your import file had errors. If your import file had no errors, you can simply proceed. If your import file had errors, you can elect to have the system import only the records that were completely acceptable (those not highlighted in yellow). Or, the system can import the acceptable records, and attempt to fix the unacceptable records and import them as well. Generally, the system can fix all problems except when key required missing fields are missing, mainly the name or User ID. All other problems can generally be fixed. There is a special case to be aware of: if you are importing a participant that is already in the system (this is checked by matching their user ID) because they are in a different course, and you choose the Import All option, then the participant will simply have the new course (the course you are currently doing the import for) added to their existing record, and their credit requirements adjusted accordingly. This makes it easier to run imports when participants can be a member of multiple courses. When using the Import All option, if you import a user who already exists in the system, the system will not update any of their data (e.g., if their name is different in the import file compared to what was already in the system). Instead, it will use the data already in the system. The only exception is that if the user was previously prevented from logging into the system, the import function will reactivate their account for login. Regardless of how you proceed, you will then receive a status report on your import, indicating how many records were imported. You must continue to properly finish the import. At this point, you may choose whether to email the newly-imported users with their login information. Regardless of your choice to email them or not, is it very 99 important to proceed to the next and final step of the import, as that will properly complete the import and clear out any remnant data from the import process itself. Figure 50 - Import Wizard Step 6 If you imported a large number of users and chose to email users with their login information, the system will send the email in groups. You will be notified of the progress on-screen. If you prefer not to email users with their login information at this point, they can retrieve it themselves with the lost password feature on the front page of the site, if you have enabled this feature (see System Settings). Another option to send login information to them at a later time is to use the Mass Email Notification feature, which has an option to include login information in the message you send. Once you have finished, you are taken back to the Main Menu, where you may start another import if you wish. Adding and Editing Users Overview Besides using the user import feature or participant account self-creation (when enabled), you may also manually add and edit users, on a per-user basis. If you are editing a participant record, this part of the system also provides the facility for manual credit granting, and the ability to monitor a participant's progress. It should be noted that this user add and edit feature is also the only facility for adding administrator accounts. This facility also provides the ability to add administrative comments about any user. This is where you may keep special notes about a user, and these notes are not visible to anyone except an administrator. 100 Finding Users Choose the Add/Edit/Search option from Users toolbar section to get started. You will see a search tool at the top, and some other quick search features, as well as a partial list of users. To quickly view a list of all users of a certain user type (with the exception of participants), click the View All Researchers (or other desired user type) link. To view a subset of users, use the search tool at the top of the page. Select the type of user you would like to search for, then choose a letter corresponding to the first letter of their last name (for instance, choose "S" to find a user with the last name Smith). Figure 51 - View and Edit Users Search Tool If you are looking for an exact user and you know their name, user ID (or email address, if the "@ Suffix" setting is blank – see System Settings) or university ID number, you can type that into the search box instead of using the letter choice. You may also have the option to search by a participant's anonymous ID code, if anonymous ID codes are enabled in System Settings. The Filter by User Status allows you to limit your search based on whether the user is allowed to login to the system. The choice "active" corresponds to being allowed to login to the system. Editing Users Once you find the user you would like to edit, choose the Update option. You can view all information about the user. If it is a participant, you will also see a list of their study sign-ups and progress, and have the opportunity to grant them a non-study credit. You can also change course assignments for participants here. Finally, you can adjust a 101 participant's credit requirements if necessary. For instance, you may need to manually increase the number of credits required of the participant. If you have Multiple Course Support enabled (see System Settings), and you change a participant's course assignments, you may need to manually adjust their credit requirements, as they are not recomputed if the course assignments are changed. To make this easier, the course requirements for each course are listed next to the course name. If the system is configured such that participants may assign their credits to a specific course, then you will have the option to transfer their credits from their old course to one of their new courses, if you are changing which courses the participant is a member of. In some cases, you may want the participant to self-select which courses they belong to again. To do this, set their course to "NONE", and the participant will be prompted to select their course(s) upon their next login. Note that setting their courses to NONE will also reset their credits needed value to 0, and it will then be recomputed after they select their courses. If Online Prescreening is enabled, and the participant has completed the prescreen, you will have an opportunity to delete their prescreen responses. Typically, this is only done if the participant for some reason wants to take the prescreen again (perhaps they answered some questions incorrectly the first time). Deleting their prescreen responses will also delete any credit the participant received for completing the prescreen. You may or may not see the user's current password, depending on the Administrator Password Retrieval setting (see System Settings). If you cannot see the user's current password, then you may only change it by typing in a new password. If the field is left blank while updating the user's record, no change will be made to the user's password if Password Retrieval is turned off. For purposes of logging in, passwords are not case- sensitive. 102 Figure 52- Updating a Participant Record If you would like to email the user with their login information, choose the Email user with their login information choice, and an email will be sent to them with their login information as soon as the record is saved. Adding Users To add a user, choose the Add and Edit Users option from the Main Menu. You will see a set of links to add a new user for each of the user types supported by the system. Choose the type of user you would like to add (for example, "New Researcher"). You will see a number of fields that vary depending on what type of user you are adding. Fields marked with a (+) are optional and may be left blank. Users can update many of the fields on their own, so you may choose to enter in only minimal data, and allow users to fill out the rest after they login. 103 Figure 53 - Adding a New Participant All users must have a password. If you would like the system to generate a random password for the user, simply leave the password field blank and a random password will be generated once the record is saved. If you are adding a participant, you must specify at least one course which the participant is a member of. If your system is configured to allow participants to belong to multiple courses (see System Settings), then you may indicate more than one course a participant belongs to, where applicable. To select multiple courses, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on the desired courses. If this is a new system and you have not added any courses, you should do so first in the Course Maintenance section. If you choose "NONE" as their course selection, the participant will be prompted to select their courses upon their next login. The alternate email address field is used to specify an alternate email delivery address for the user. If an email address is provided here, then emails to the user from the system (credit notifications, sign-up notifications, etc.) will be sent to the alternate email address. If this field is empty, an email will be sent to the address formed by adding the system- wide @ suffix (see System Settings) to the end of the user's User ID. If the user's User ID is "jsmith" and the @ suffix is "yourschool.edu", then the email would be sent to email@example.com. You may provide only one alternate email address in this field. The alternate email address may be disabled for participants. See Emails and User IDs for more information. If the "@ Suffix" (see System Settings) is blank, then the alternate email address (which is then labeled "Email Address") is mandatory. All emails for the user will go to this address. If you add a user and the email address is also used by another account on the 104 system, you will be warned, but the system will allow it. This situation usually occurs when the same person has 2 user accounts, because they play multiple roles in the system. The Admin. Comments field allows you to type in any special notes about the user. This field is only visible to the administrator and you may enter up to 255 characters. When you are done entering information, click Save Changes and the user will be added. If you chose "Yes" for the "Email User with their Login Information" option, then they will be sent an email with their login information. Deleting Users The deletion of a user should be done very carefully and with great forethought. Deleting a user deletes all data associated with them. The effect of deleting the associated data can be quite disastrous. For instance, if you delete a researcher who owned 2 studies with many sign-ups, the researcher's studies, as well as all sign-up data, is also deleted. On top of that, if the study is deleted, then the detail about credits earned by participants for that study will also be deleted, making it very hard to track participant credit earnings correctly. Likewise, if you delete a participant then all data associated with them, including their sign-ups and online survey response data, will be deleted. The system will provide a warning and some detailed information about the effects of deleting the selected user, and you should heed this warning. The system will prevent the deletion of a researcher or PI account where they have studies with signups that have credits linked to them, or studies with signups that are in the future or awaiting action. There are few cases when you will need to delete an individual user, so use this feature carefully. If you are worried about causing problems but want to prevent the user from using the system, you can instead update their record and set the "Login to System Allowed" value to No (see Editing Users). Another option if you would really like to delete a certain researcher or PI, and they have studies linked to them, is to reassign those studies to a different researcher/PI and then delete the desired user since they will no longer have any studies linked to them. You could even create a "dummy" account just for the purposes of holding these old studies. 105 Figure 54 - Deleting A User If you still find it necessary to delete a user, locate them from the Add and Edit Users menu, and choose the Delete option. You will see a confirmation screen noting the effects of your deletion (if any), and you can choose Yes to proceed with the deletion. You cannot delete yourself, but you can delete other administrator accounts. If you want to delete a bulk of users, most likely it is the end of the semester and you are looking to clear out old data. In this case, see the End-of-Semester Maintenance section, which provides a bulk deletion facility. If you would like to deactivate (but not deleted) a set of user accounts, you can use the Batch User Operations feature. A user who is deactivated cannot login to the system, but all their data is retained. Login Days Tracking The system tracks the number of "login days" for each user, which is the number of unique days a user has logged in. For example, if a user logs in twice in one day, that will count only as one "login day" but if they login once on two consecutive days, that will count as two "login days." The start and end of each day is determined by the time set in Current Time in System Settings, which should be the time where you are located, as opposed to the time where the servers are located. This information is useful mostly for participants, to counter any claims they might have that they logged in every day and did not see any available studies, etc. This information 106 can also be included on the Course Credit Report available to the administrator, and can be viewed when going to edit a user's record. For participants, this counter can be reset to 0 in End of Semester Maintenance. This feature was added in August 2007, so data about login days has only been collected from that point onwards. Limiting a Participant's Access to the System If you would like to allow a participant to login, but restrict their ability to sign up, one option is to set the "Limit to Research Alternative Studies?" setting for their account. If this is set to Automatic (the default), then the system will make their account Limited only after they have accrued a specific number of unexcused no-shows (see No-Show Account Limit in System Settings). The administrator may also manually set the account so that it is always Limited or never Limited. If an account is Limited (either manually or automatically), then the participant may only sign up for studies designated as research alternative studies. This is a good way to limit the sign-ups for participants who should not participate in other research (either they have not consented, or they are too young to consent). It is also a good way to limit participants who have accrued excessive unexcused no-shows (see No-Show Handling). Removing a User's Access to the System If you would simply like to prevent a user from logging in, but still preserve their data, the easiest way to do this is to update their record and set the "Login to System Allowed" value to No. You can re-enable their login at a later date if desired. See Editing Users for more information. New Participant Account Message For participants (and only participants), it is possible to specify additional information that is included in the email sent to a participant with their login information, when their account is created. Such an email is sent when the participant creates their own account, or when their account is created by the administrator, either using the bulk import feature or when an individual account is created. Typically, such account text may contain special instructions or a pointer to additional information. To set up such text, login as an administrator and go to Create User Message then Update System Text, and enter text in the appropriate section. If you would like to clear out any existing text there, simply delete it and save the changes. The changes will take effect immediately. 107 Bulk Email Usage For all users except instructor and participant accounts (since those accounts do not have access to bulk email features), you can also see the bulk email usage history for the user when going to view their account, if any such information exists. The system tracks when a user uses one of the bulk email facilities in the system. The information is retained for 6 months. See Mass Email reports for more information. Principal Investigator (P.I.) Accounts If the Principal Investigator option is enabled (see System Settings), then the system will support P.I. accounts. P.I. accounts have the full privileges of a researcher, for studies in which the user is listed as the P.I. The reason for P.I. accounts is in situations where the researcher runs the study on behalf of a P.I., but the P.I. would like to occasionally login and monitor the study's progress. It should be noted that if you enable the P.I. option, every study must have a P.I. If you have a situation where only a few studies have P.I.s, create a dummy P.I. account so researchers can select that dummy P.I. as the P.I. of studies that don't otherwise have a P.I. In many cases, it is easier just to turn off the PI feature altogether, and list PIs as researchers. Principal Investigator Timeslot Usage Limit If the Timeslot Usage Restriction (see System Settings) is enabled and set to enforce on a per-P.I. basis, then principal investigators are limited in the amount of time they may use for scheduling timeslots. The default limit (in hours) is based on the Timeslot Usage Restriction Default (see System Settings), but this may be changed on a per-P.I. basis by editing the their record. Their current usage is listed when you update their record. You may also generate reports on P.I. time usage (see Generating Reports). Since researchers for a study have the same level of control as the principal investigator does, then researchers can view the usage for a study based on the principal investigator, and are forced to adhere to that limit. The timeslot usage is computed by adding up all timeslots in the past where credit was granted, then adding in the value of all future timeslots (regardless of credit status). Thus, it is possible for a P.I.'s usage to go down as time progresses, if their future timeslots are not used (i.e. participants do not sign up for them). Principal investigators and their researchers are reminded of their timeslot usage every time they go to add a timeslot. Researcher Accounts Researchers may choose to receive a daily reminder of the sessions they have scheduled for the following day. Researchers can adjust this setting on their own. The default value is set based on the Researcher Reminder Email setting (see System Settings). This email is sent once a day (if there is a reminder to be sent), immediately after participants are 108 sent a reminder of the following day's studies (if such an option is enabled). The email is also sent if the researcher has any timeslots more than 2 days old that have not been dealt with. Researchers should still check into the system routinely, in case a participant signed up (or cancelled) for a study after the daily reminder email was sent. Researcher Timeslot Usage Limit If the Timeslot Usage Restriction (see System Settings) is enabled and set to enforce on a per-researcher basis, then researchers are limited in the amount of time they may use for scheduling timeslots. The default limit (in hours) is based on the Timeslot Usage Restriction Default (see System Settings), but this may be changed on a per-researcher basis by editing the researcher's record. Their current usage is listed when you update their record. You may also generate reports on researcher time usage (see Generating Reports). The timeslot usage is computed by adding up all timeslots in the past where credit was granted, then adding in the value of all future timeslots (regardless of credit status). Thus, it is possible for a researcher's usage to go down as time progresses, if their future timeslots are not used (i.e. participants do not sign up for them). Researchers are reminded of their timeslot usage every time they go to add a timeslot. Administrator Accounts You may have more than one administrator account in the system. All administrators have the same level of high privileges. Be careful who has an administrator account, and be sure administrator accounts have an extremely secure password. A secure password contains at least 8 characters, and is a combination of letters and numbers. Administrator accounts have full privileges to the system. Not only can the administrator accomplish administrator tasks (importing users, running reports, changing system-wide settings, etc.), but the administrator can also accomplish all the tasks of a researcher. The advantage of this added researcher privilege is that an administrator can act as a researcher for monitoring purposes or other reasons. This need might arise if a researcher is sick but there are participants who are waiting to receive credit from the researcher. The administrator can easily act on behalf of the absent researcher and perform the necessary tasks. Emails from the system, as well as notifications to the administrator, will be based on the email address provided in System Settings, and not in the email address field for a particular administrator account. Also note that administrators should receive the proper training in handling sensitive data (to meet various regulatory requirements governing data), since they have access to all data in the system. See Regulatory Compliance for more information. 109 Participant Account Self-Creation Overview If the feature is enabled (see Participant Account Self-Creation in System Settings) to allow participants to create their own accounts, then this section applies. Some schools choose to allow participants to sign up for their own accounts. If this feature is enabled, a link will appear on the front (login) page of the site to provide this facility. This feature can exist as a supplement to importing participants from a data file and manually adding them, or it can be the only method of adding participant accounts. None of the methods of adding participants is mutually exclusive. Typically, a school may choose to use this self sign-up feature if a data import of the participant list is unavailable. It should be noted that the self sign-up feature is only available for participant accounts, which likely make up the bulk of user accounts in the system. Other user types (instructors, administrators, researchers, etc.) of users may only be added through the user import wizard or add user forms, as then there is assurance that the administrator has actually reviewed that user's account and they are allowed access to the data in the system. When a participant goes to the account self-creation form, they must provide very basic information, including their name, user ID, and choose which course(s) they are enrolled in. If the Student ID Requirement is set to Yes (see System Settings) and Student ID Deactivation is set to No (see System Settings), then participants must also provide their Student/University ID number. If Automatic Account Approval (see System Settings) is set to Yes, then participants will be emailed their password as soon as they submit their account request. If this value is set to No, then the administrator must approve accounts before they may login. If "@ Suffix" is provided (see System Settings), the key to authenticating a participant's validity is their user ID. A participant is notified of their password only after their account is approved by the administrator (or if it is automatically approved, based on the Automatic Account Approval system setting), and this approval email is sent to the email address derived from their user ID. Since only the "real" participant can check the email account for that user ID, it is a good method to ensure that the person applying for the account is who they claim to be. If a participant prefers to be contacted at an alternate email address, they can supply that only after their first login, by updating their profile (if alternate email addresses are enabled for participants – see System Settings). If the participant supplies an invalid email address (usually just a simple typo), the email will bounce back to the administrator (the email address specified as Administrator Email in System Settings), so the administrator can take corrective action. To reduce the 110 chances of this, participants are required to enter their email address twice for verification. If the "@ Suffix" is left blank, the user may select any user ID, but they must provide a contact email address as well. In this case, the administrator will need to verify that the person is allowed to use the system before approving the account, if Automatic Account Approval is disabled. In either situation for the Automatic Account Approval setting, if Administrator Account Notification Email (see System Settings) is set to Yes, then the administrator will be notified by email when an account is requested. This setting can be changed mid-term. Some organizations like to disable this at the start of the term, when they know many accounts are being requested and they just log on to the site every day to review these new accounts. Then they enable it after the initial rush, as they may not be on the site as often, to monitor for new account activity. The form will provide the opportunity for the participant to select which course(s) they belong to, assuming there is more than one course in the system (if there is only one course, there is no need to offer a selection). Participants can change this course assignment later, if Course Reassignment (see System Settings) is enabled and they have not yet earned any credits. The administrator may add additional text on the new account creation page to provide specific guidance to participants on creating accounts. This text is set in Create User Messages | Update System Text. See Updating System Text for more information. When the participant is emailed their account information, any additional message the administrator has specified to be sent with new participant accounts will be included in the email. See Updating System Text for more information. Automatic Account Approval If Automatic Account Approval is set to Yes (see System Settings), participants are emailed their account information immediately after they request their account – with no administrator intervention required. As an administrator you may monitor such activities by viewing the recent users report (Users | View Recent) to see the last 20 new users. You may also enable Administrator Account Notification Email (see System Settings), to receive an email notification every time an account is requested. Approving Accounts On the User toolbar section, there is an option labeled Approve New (if Automatic Account Approval is set to No). Next to it will be listed the number of user accounts awaiting approval. If the offline prescreen option is enabled, there is also an option to set the participant's prescreen status at the same time. Read over the basic information the participant provided, and approve or delete the account. There is also a space to enter any comments (this is optional), and these comments will be included in the email to the participant with their login information. If the account is approved, an email will be sent 111 to the participant notifying them of the approval, and include login information (their password) for the site, and their Unique ID code if the feature is enabled (see Participant Unique ID Codes). If the account is deleted, an email will only be sent if you included comments (usually the reason for account rejection). If you would like to receive an email notification every time a new account awaits your approval (this is particularly useful in the middle of the term, when you may not be checking the site as often), enable the Administrator Account Notification Email setting (see System Settings). Figure 55- Approving New Users Online Prescreening Introduction The system includes a rather extensive online prescreening feature. It allows you to set up a system-wide prescreen that participants must complete before they use the system. Researchers can restrict participation in studies based on prescreen results, and they may also view an individual participant's prescreen responses (if enabled, see System Settings). Finally, the researcher may analyze prescreen responses in the aggregate (across all participants). The online prescreen feature is rather complex due to the many features it contains. In addition, your ability to modify the prescreen after participants have started to take the prescreen (or after researchers have placed study restrictions based on prescreen responses) is quite limited. Because of this, you should plan out your prescreen well in advance, to make sure it is finalized before you make it available to participants. This is important to emphasize – you should plan the prescreen ahead of time, as your ability to change it once some participants have completed it is very limited. Because the prescreen is system-wide and may involve questions from a variety of researchers, many organizations choose to plan out the prescreen on paper first (what 112 questions and sections it will contain) before inputting it online in the system. There may be only one prescreen in the system. If you want to allow researchers to set up their own sections, the easiest way to do this is to have them set up their own (inactive) online survey study, and you can then copy the appropriate sections from their online survey into the prescreen, once it is ready. See Copying a Section in this documentation for more information. A prescreen may have an unlimited number of sections and an unlimited number of questions per section, though we recommend limiting the prescreen to fewer than 300 total questions and 15 sections, to reduce participant fatigue. This can be an issue since they must complete the prescreen all at once. The system will make participants aware that their session may time out because of inactivity, in cases where the prescreen contains sections that have more than 15 questions (since participants are likely to spend a lot of time on those sections and thus risk being logged out for inactivity). Questions may be free-entry (requiring the participant to type in an answer) or multiple- choice (pick only one or pick many from the list of choices). You may also specify that the system computes a participant's results for an entire section, as either a section sum or average score. This computed sum or average can be computed only for numeric, multiple-choice (pick only one) questions in the section. It is useful in situations where you want to restrict participation based on the average of a participant's responses to a section, to account for one or two outlying responses that still fall within the adequate range when the participant's entire response set is considered. It is also useful when a participant's aggregate score is more important, such as with a depression battery. For free-entry questions where the participant is asked to enter a free-form text answer, the size of the entry field (as it is displayed) can be changed in length (display width) only. Participants may enter up to 255 characters in their response. Studies can be restricted so that only participants providing certain responses (or with certain section average/sum scores) may participate in the study. Participants are unaware that such restrictions are in place – the system will simply not show participants studies for which they are ineligible due to prescreen restrictions. Studies can only be restricted based on multiple-choice (numeric or non-numeric) questions that allow for only one choice to be selected. A study can be restricted by one question or a set of questions, and to any response or set of responses for each question. Researchers are provided with a facility to analyze any prescreen question response in aggregate (across all participants), to help them in placing their study restrictions (if Prescreen Aggregate Viewing is enabled, see System Settings). For instance, a researcher may want to choose the top 25% of participants, but is unsure what responses constitute the top 25% until the responses are analyzed. If enabled, researchers can also view all of an individual participant's responses to a prescreen, if that participant has signed up for the researcher's study. They may also contact a group of participants who meet their specified criteria, presumably to invite them to participate in one of their studies. The 113 contact feature is only enabled for researchers from the Analyze Prescreen Responses page if the Prescreen Contact and Prescreen Aggregate Viewing (see System Settings) are enabled. If only the Prescreen Contact setting is enabled, then researchers may contact qualified participants when setting up prescreen participation restrictions for their own study only. You should consult with your IRB before enabling this setting, as some IRBs are concerned that contacting participants and inviting them to participate in a specific study may be coercive. There is also a setting so the administrator can automatically receive an email copy of any communication sent to participants via this contact method (see Prescreen Contact Admin CC. in System Settings). Finally, the first sentence or two of such emails are logged, and can be viewed in the Mass Email report. Sections can be displayed in a specified order or random order, or a combination of both. Every section may contain introductory text introducing the section, and the prescreen itself may also have introductory text introducing the prescreen, as well as closing text that is displayed upon completion of the prescreen. You may specify that questions within a section are displayed in random order. If you do not specify random ordering for questions in a section, then the questions will be displayed (in each section) in the order they were entered and cannot be reordered later. Multiple choice questions can have their choices displayed in the entered order or random order (this is specified on a per-question basis). Multiple choice question choices can be displayed horizontally (across the page) or vertically (down the page). For information specifically on restricting study participation based on prescreen results or analyzing and viewing prescreen responses, please see the Researcher documentation. Note that there is a bug in Internet Explorer 5 on the Macintosh platform that may result in a slow response for participants when they are using this specific web browser/computer combination and completing prescreen sections with many choices. Microsoft has discontinued support for Internet Explorer on the Mac, so this bug will not be fixed. The other browsers on the Mac (Firefox, Safari, and Mozilla) all work perfectly, and there are no problems for Windows users with any browser. The specific problem occurs only rarely, but can occur. Things should be fine with any popular browser released since 2005. Privacy Protections You may configure the prescreen so a participant may opt out of it. You may also configure each question (on a per-question basis) so that participants may opt out of answering the question. If anonymous identification is enabled (see Participant Identification in System Settings), participants are only identified to researchers with a unique numeric ID code. Prescreen Participation Credits When you set up the prescreen, you may specify the number of credits a participant will earn for completing the prescreen, and also the number of credits they earn for declining to participate in the prescreen (if they are allowed to opt out of it). If participants are allowed to assign credits to a specific course (see Course Credit Assignment in System 114 Settings), they are also prompted to choose which course they would like to assign their credit to, before they may finish the prescreen. If you would not like to allow participants to earn credit, simple set the value(s) to 0 when you set up the prescreen. It is not required that participants earn credit for prescreen participation. Keep in mind the prescreen is presented to a participant the first time the log on, before they can see studies. Thus you can safely assume that all participants have dealt with the prescreen by the time they really start to use the system. Working on this assumption, many schools choose just to lower the default credit requirements for all users by the amount they would ordinarily grant for prescreen participation. Creating or Modifying a Prescreen To work with a prescreen, login as an administrator and click on Prescreen Setup on the top menu bar. If there is an existing prescreen in the system, you will be given the opportunity to modify it or delete it and create a new prescreen. For more information about deleting a prescreen, see Deleting a Prescreen. It is important to note that while you are making changes to a prescreen, it is deactivated so participants may not take the prescreen. When you go to the Finalize Prescreen option after you have finished your work with the prescreen, you will have the opportunity to save your changes and make the prescreen active (available to participants) or inactive (not available to participants). If a participant who has not completed the prescreen logs in and the prescreen is inactive, they can still use the system as a normal user. On their next login when the prescreen is active, they will be taken to the prescreen. You should always choose the Finalize Prescreen option when you finish your work with the prescreen, as the system saves all changes and computes some other important data when you finalize the prescreen. If you would like to continue work on the prescreen at a later date, you should still choose the Finalize Prescreen option to ensure your changes during the current session are properly saved (most likely you would choose to keep the prescreen inactive in this situation). The prescreen is only available to participants if it is marked Active in the prescreen setup. So, if you want to just work on the prescreen or perhaps just not use it for a semester, your best option is to make the prescreen inactive for that period of time. The other option (turning it off in System Settings) may not be ideal as you then have no way of setting up the prescreen if the feature is turned off. General Prescreen Information Choose the General Information option (if creating a new prescreen, this is the first page you will see) to provide some basic information about the prescreen. The fields are explained below: Field Description Introductory Text Optional, maximum 10,000 characters. 115 Provide a set of text that will be displayed when a participant starts the prescreen. If you allow participants to opt out of the prescreen, this text will be displayed on the page that allows them to opt out, so you might want to include any information about why a participant may or may not want to opt out. You may include HTML in this area, but please be sure you know what you are doing. If you would like to add a carriage-return (paragraph break), simply type in "<p>" (without the quotes). When you first create the prescreen, the system will automatically insert some basic default text in this area. You may change any of this text as much as you like – the system will not change it back later as long as you save your changes. You may view how this text is displayed to participants by saving it, then going to Preview Introductory Text, which is available from the Section List page. Closing Text Optional, maximum 7,000 characters. Provide a set of text that will be displayed after the participant has finished the prescreen and saved all their responses. This is a great place to include any relevant debriefing information. You may include HTML in this area, but please be sure you know what you are doing. If you would like to add a carriage-return (paragraph break), simply type in "<p>" (without the quotes). You may view how this text is displayed to participants by saving it, then going to Preview Closing Text, which is available from the Section List page. Display sections in random order? You may specify a specific ordering for sections, have the system randomize the order for all sections, or specify the order of some sections, and a random order for other sections. If you specify the order for only some sections, you may also specify, for each section, whether it should be 116 displayed before or after the random- ordered sections. The system does not keep track of the random ordering for sections for each participant. Participant response review/change If set to Yes, then participants may review and change their responses just before they complete the prescreen. They are given this opportunity after they complete the last section of the prescreen, and before any closing text is shown. At this point, they can see all their responses and go back to any section to change their responses. Once they complete the prescreen, they cannot go back at a later date and change any responses. It may be useful to set this option to No (so that they are not allowed to review or change their responses at the end of the prescreen) if sections are somehow dependent on one another, such that allowing participants to change their responses may affect the integrity of data collection. Can participants choose to opt-out of the If set to Yes, participants may opt out of prescreen? participating in the prescreen. They may take it at a later time (through a link on their My Profile page). How many credits should a participant Enter a number indicating how many receive for completing the prescreen? credits the participant will receive for completion of the prescreen. If they should not earn credits for completing the prescreen, enter the value "0". Fractional credit values (e.g. 0.5, 1.25, etc.) are allowed, up to two decimal places. How many credits should a participant Enter a number indicating how many receive if they choose to opt-out of the credits the participant will receive for prescreen? declining to participate in the prescreen. If they should not earn credits for declining to participate in the prescreen, enter the value "0". Fractional credit values (e.g. 0.5, 1.25, etc.) are allowed, up to two decimal places. This value only applies if participants are allowed to opt-out of the prescreen. 117 Figure 56 - Prescreen General Information Section List Depending on if you are adding or editing the prescreen, you will be taken to the list of sections for the prescreen. Here, you can change the order that sections will be displayed (if you have not enabled full random section ordering for the prescreen), and see a quick review of each question. From here, you can add a question to any section and edit any question. To add a new section, choose the Add a New Section choice at the bottom of the page. If you have enabled partial random section ordering, then you can specify a section order for the sections you would like to be displayed in a specified order. For the sections you would like to be displayed in random order, leave the Section Order area blank. When you specify a section order, use each number once, and use the numbers 1-98 if you would like the section to be displayed before the random-ordered sections, and the numbers 100-199 if you would like the section to be displayed after the random-ordered sections. Be sure to use each number only once, or leave the number blank to make the section part of the random-ordered section. Sometimes it is useful to use partial random ordering if you want to ask basic (e.g. demographic) information in the first few sections, while asking more analytical questions in the random-ordered sections. Likewise, you may want to ask about the previous random-ordered sections after they are completed. If a question is eligible for prescreen participation restrictions (i.e., it is a multiple choice question where only one choice may be chosen), then there will be a Study Restrictions link where you can see which studies are using this question for participation restrictions. 118 This information is helpful in the event you want to delete the question, as you see which studies (if any) will be affected by doing so. There is also a Preview Section option so you may preview the section of the prescreen as participants will see it. Figure 57 - Prescreen Section List Adding or Modifying a Section To add a new section, choose the Add New Section link at the bottom of the Section List page. To modify an existing section, choose the Edit Section Information link next to the section you would like to modify, from the Section List page. There are three pieces of information you may provide for each section. First, you may specify some introductory text to be displayed at the beginning of the section. When participants take the prescreen, they view one section at a time, and all the questions in that section. The introductory text may be helpful in explaining the purpose or topic of the questions in that section. You may include HTML in this area, but please be sure you know what you are doing. If you would like to add a carriage-return (paragraph break), simply type in "<p>" (without the quotes). The introductory text is limited to 15,000 characters. You may choose if the questions for that section are displayed in random order or the order they are entered. You may also choose to have the system compute a section sum or average (for each participant) for the section. These scores are computed only for all the multiple-choice, numeric questions in a section. Think carefully about setting this value, because you are 119 very limited in your ability to change it after participants have started to take the prescreen or study restrictions have been placed based on the prescreen. The advantage of a section sum or average is that researchers may choose to restrict their studies based on this, instead of an individual response in the section. Often this is useful when all the questions are using a unidimensional scale (1-5, for example), but a participant's average score response to the section is more useful to account for their outlier responses. Depending on if you are editing or adding a section, after you save your changes, you will be taken to a page to add a new question or to the section list. Figure 58 - Add New Section Adding or Editing a Question To add or edit a question, choose the appropriate choice from the Section List, next to the desired section. Questions will be displayed in the order they are added to a section, or in a random order, depending on the section settings. Questions cannot be reordered after they are added, so this should be planned carefully. Depending on the state of the section and if participants have taken the prescreen, some options will be automatically set for you, and not changeable. All fields must be filled out. Field Description Question Text The text for the question. This will be displayed above each question's choices. Maximum 15,000 characters. Abbreviated Question Name A 15-character label for the question. This 120 is not displayed to participants and is used to name the columns that appear when the data is exported in CSV format. Many statistical analysis programs limit column names to 15 characters. Question Type Multiple Choice (select one), Multiple Choice (select many) or Free Entry. If the section has a computed average or sum, you may be limited in your ability to add Multiple Choice (select one) non-numeric questions. Free entry choices may contain a response up to 255 characters in length. Studies may not be restricted on free-entry choices or multiple-choice (select many) questions, but a participant's response to free-entry choices are listed when viewing a participant's prescreen responses. Display length of Free-Entry field Specifies the length (size) of a free-entry field when it is displayed. Acceptable values for this setting at 5-85, and the field will always allow participants to type in up to 255 characters. The height of the field cannot be adjusted, and this setting only applies to Free Entry questions. Display choices in random order? If set to Yes, the choices for this question will be displayed to participants in a random order. This option only applies to multiple choice questions. How should the choices be displayed? Horizontal (across the page) or vertical (down the page) are the two options for how the choices for a multiple-choice question should be displayed. Often, the horizontal display is effective when the question involves a scale. This setting applies only to multiple-choice questions. Can participants decline to provide an If set to Yes, participants will see a choice answer for this question? below this question that allows them to opt out of answering the question. If set to No, they must answer the question. The default when adding a new question (not copying an existing question or section) is set to Yes for ethical compliance. Are all choices numeric? If set to Yes, all choices must be numeric whole numbers (e.g. 1, -2, 10). This only applies to multiple choice questions. Studies may be restricted based on numeric 121 or non-numeric multiple choice questions, however sections with a computed section sum or average may not contain non- numeric multiple choice questions. Display numeric value? If set to No, the numeric value of the choice is not displayed to participants. This only applies to numeric, multiple-choice questions where each choice includes both a numeric value and associated text (e.g. "5 Strongly Agree"). This is useful when running a reverse scale. If the question is a multiple choice question, you must also fill out the choices section that is part of the same form. A minimum of 1 choice must be provided for the question. Each choice may be up to 255 characters in length. If the question is specified as numeric, you must provide a numeric choice, and that choice must be a whole number (e.g. -5, 1, 0, 349). If you would like to provide descriptive text to accompany each numeric choice, you may do so by typing in the numeric choice and leaving one blank space after it, then typing in the descriptive text, for example: "5 Strongly Agree". If you provide descriptive text along with the numeric choice, then you have the option of hiding the numeric value from participants, by choosing No to the "Display numeric value?" setting for the question. This is useful in reverse scale or other situations where the numeric value for the choices is not important. If you add a question to the prescreen, and some participants have already completed the prescreen, they will not be asked to answer the additional questions upon their next login. However, participants who have not already completed the prescreen will be shown the latest version of the prescreen, with any new questions also displayed. Because of this, you should plan the prescreen carefully and avoid adding questions after some participants have already completed the prescreen. 122 Figure 59 - Edit a Question Copying a Section You may copy a section from any survey into the prescreen, by choosing Copy From an Existing Section in the Section List. You will see a list of eligible surveys to copy from. After you choose which survey to copy from, you will see a list of eligible sections in that survey. Once you choose a section, it will be copied into the prescreen you are currently editing. The administrator may also use the same facility when editing an online survey, to copy a section from the prescreen into an online survey. This can be useful to archive prescreen sections into a "holding" survey. Likewise, it may be useful to have researchers set up their own sections in a separate online survey, then copy that into the prescreen. Copying a Question For multiple-choice questions, it is often the case that many questions have the same measures (choices). To make entry of similar questions easier, you may use the Copy Question feature to copy a question. Such an option is only available for multiple choice questions. To copy a question, select the question you would like to copy (when viewing the Section List). You will then be taken to a list of sections where you may copy this question to (the default is set to the section the question came from). After you decide which section you would like to copy the question to, you will be taken to a page where you can make any final changes to the copy of the question before saving it. 123 Saving Your Changes When you are done, you should go to the Final Review and save your changes. Even if you plan to do further editing on the prescreen later, it is imperative that you go to the Final Review step, as the system needs to save certain special changes and make some computations. If you do not want participants to take the prescreen yet, you can save changes but keep the prescreen inactive. When you save your changes, it may take a moment to save all the changes, as the system is performing a number of computations on the prescreen. Please be patient, as these computations are done to make performance for participants and studies as fast as possible. The system tracks which user last made the prescreen active or inactive and when they did this, and this is displayed on the setup page. Figure 60 - Saving Prescreen Changes Viewing the Prescreen as a Participant If you would like to see how the prescreen will be displayed to participants, that can easily be done while setting up the prescreen. Next to each section (in the section list), there will be a Preview Section link so you can view the section exactly as participants would see it. You may also view how the introductory and closing text will appear to participants, by choosing the Preview Introductory Text and Preview Closing Text options which appear on the Section List page. Participants will see a basic progress display on the top right corner of each page, listing the section they are on (ordinal counting), and how many sections total are in the prescreen (excluding the Admin. Section, if there is one). When using Preview Section, you will see this progress display as well, except the current section number will appear as "X" in preview mode since it is not an actual participant taking the prescreen (and randomization of section order may be involved). 124 Admin Section Introduction In some cases, it may be useful to provide responses on behalf of a participant, with the goal being to use those responses as the basis of prescreen participation restrictions on a study. For example, there may be a special computation scale (too complex for the system to calculate with existing section sum/mean computations) based on a participant's responses that is useful to determine who can participate in a study. The main idea here is that the administrator can set up and then insert responses on a participant's behalf, with the goal of using those to restrict participation in studies. This feature can be very powerful because of its flexibility. For example, let's say there is a new method of grouping participants, potentially unrelated to the prescreen responses they provide (perhaps they are divided into random sub-groups, for example). The administrator could easily insert this data as prescreen responses in the admin section. Such data can only be inserted for questions in the admin section. Because this section is intended for use in setting up study prescreen participation restrictions, it has some restrictions. First, only multiple-choice questions where only one choice may be chosen can be added into this section (since those are the only types of questions that can be used for prescreen participation restrictions). This section is never visible to participants. Rather, it is a special section only visible to the administrator and researchers, and is considered part of the participant's prescreen responses. Like other multiple-choice (pick one choice) questions on the prescreen, questions in the admin section are eligible for study prescreen participation restrictions. Prescreen responses can be inserted only for those who have successfully completed the prescreen, and they can be inserted in a batch so that the responses for one question can be uploaded on behalf of many participants at once. It is not possible to insert responses for participants who have opted out of the prescreen. This feature is intended for advanced users, as it may require skills in how to handle data sets (for importing responses). Please consult with your IT experts if you have difficulty assembling the data in the proper format. Creating the Admin Section The prescreen can have only one admin section. To create it, choose the Add Admin Section option that appears on the Section List page (at the bottom). If this option is not there, then an Admin Section has already been created and you should see it in the section list, noted as such. You may not create the admin section by copying an existing section. Once the section is added, you can add questions just like with any other section. The only restriction is that you may only add multiple-choice questions where only once choice may be chosen. Because of this, you will be limited in your ability to copy questions from other sections, if those other questions are not of that question type. 125 Inserting Responses into the Admin Section You may only insert responses on behalf of participants who have completed the prescreen, and only for questions in the admin section. To do so, go to Prescreen Setup | Upload Prescreen Responses. Going here will not take the prescreen offline, so it is not a problem to do this while the prescreen is active. You can upload data for only one question at a time. Choose the desired question and the system will give a list of acceptable responses for that question, and the format it expects for the data. In terms of the format, on a single line you may separate the data by a comma or a blank space, but not both. Once you click Proceed, the system will process the data you provided and provide information regarding if the data provided was acceptable. You then have the option to change the data, or proceed and it will insert the data. You may upload responses for the same participant for the same question more than once – the latest response will override any previous responses, and only the latest response will be stored. Download Prescreen Response Data The Download Prescreen Responses option appears on the Prescreen Setup menu, and such an option does not take the prescreen offline. For information about the download options, see Analyzing Survey Responses in the researcher section of the documentation (Online Survey Studies section) as the functionality is the same. Deleting a Prescreen At the end of the term, you may want to delete the prescreen and all relevant data. The option appears in Get/Remove Data | End-of-Semester Maintenance, and also in the Prescreen Setup. You should use this option carefully. Deleting a prescreen also deletes all participant prescreen responses, and removes any study prescreen restrictions. This may result in unqualified participants being able to sign up for restricted studies. You may also use the Data Export option (found in the Get/Remove Data section) to save all relevant prescreen information for archival or later analysis. If you would like to delete a specific participant's prescreen responses, the option is available when editing the participant's record. If you would like to keep the prescreen intact, but merely delete all participant responses (this is often done at the end of the term), choose the Delete All Prescreen Responses option in End-of-Semester Maintenance. Any credit earned for completing the prescreen will be retained. The next time the participant logs in, they will be asked to complete the prescreen again (assuming the prescreen is available). This option also makes it easy to modify the existing prescreen in preparation for the upcoming term, since there is a lot of flexibility in modifying the prescreen if no responses have been collected. 126 Generating Reports Overview The Reports section is accessed by an administrator by choosing the Generate Reports option from the Tasks toolbar. These reports provide various information on participant credit completion and participant participation status, as well as some information about researchers and studies. If you choose to create Instructor logins and assign Instructors to Courses, the Instructors can generate their own Credit Completion reports and you as an Administrator may not need to use the Reports feature for that purpose. All reports can be viewed on-screen, or exported in CSV (comma-separated) format, for import into popular spreadsheet programs like Excel. Most reports have a printer-friendly format for easy printing. If you choose to print the reports, and you find the formatting is too wide for the page, you can change the printing format from Portrait to Landscape. This change is made in your web browser, as part of the print options, and you can ask your IT department for more help with this. Figure 61 - Report Generation Credit Completion Reports The credit completion reports list the credit completion status for each participant. You can choose to list only complete or only incomplete participants, or all participants. A participant is considered a completed participant when the number of credits they have completed is at least as many as they are required to complete. 127 You must choose a course when generating this report. Courses that are "active" (marked Selectable in Course Listings) will be listed, followed by those that are inactive, when applicable. If your system is configured such that participants can assign credits to individual courses (see System Settings), the resulting report will list the participant's credit completion status overall, as well as for the selected course. If your system is not configured to allow for individual course credit assignment, then you will just see the participant's overall credit completion status. Participants who have not completed all their credit requirements are listed in bold for easy identification. You may also choose to view the Admin. Comments for each participant (if there are any) are listed with the report. You may choose to include login days in this report. This is a measure of the number of unique days a participant logged in, and is a good way to measure how often the participant likely checked on the system for available studies. See Login Days Tracking for more information. The report also includes a column indicating the Overall Unexcused No-Shows a participant has accrued. If there is a policy whereby there is some type of bonus for participants who do not accrue any unexcused no-shows, then use this column to determine which participants fit into that category (look for values of 0). See No-Show Handling for further information. The report you generate is identical to the report an instructor can generate, except instructors may not view the Admin. Comments or Login Days. Thus, you may find it easier to set up Instructor accounts and allow instructors to generate credit completion reports on their own. You may click on any participant's name to go directly to their data in the system. If you would like to generate a report across all courses, choose the All Courses option in the Course selection menu (the All Courses option is the first choice). Be aware that the report may take a while to generate if there are many participants in the system, and in some cases it may be impossible to generate. If you would like to generate a report of participants who are not currently linked to a course (this might happen if you adjusted their record so their course selection is "NONE"), choose the Participants without a Course option in the Course selection menu. There is an option to email the report to a specified email address, after you have generated the report in on-screen format (it appears at the bottom of the report). The email address box will be pre-filled with the email address of the instructor of the course, when applicable. If sent, the emailed report will contain the report in CSV (comma- separated) format only. Please ensure only one email address is specified. No-Show Reports The No-Show report shows participants who have failed to appear for a study. You may view this ordered by the participant's name, the study name, or by date. Included in the report are any comments the researcher left when noting the no-show situation. If you 128 click on the participant's name, you will be taken to that participant's record, so you may view all their progress. Participants who are prevented from logging into the system will be noted as "(inactive)" in the report. You may restore these privileges by going to edit that participant's account and allowing them to login to the system. If you view the report summarized by participant, then you will see a summary of all no- shows earned for each participant that has earned no-shows. You may restrict this report to a certain date range, in which case the report will only include no-shows accrued during the specified date range (based on the date of the timeslot, not when the no-show was actually given by the researcher). You may also restrict it to only show participants who have earned a specified number of no-shows. Unassigned Credit Reports This report is available if the system is configured so that participants may assign their credits to a specific course (see System Settings). In some cases, not all credits will have been assigned to a course. Some reasons can include that the credits were from archived data, or the participant was signed up for a study with a batch manual credit grant. There is a link next to each credit if you would like to reassign the credit to a course. Participants may do this on their own by going to My Schedule/Credits. Time Usage Reports The Time Usage report gives a listing of how many hours of timeslots have been used, by Study, Researcher, or P.I. (if enabled). If the system is configured to enforce a limit (see Timeslot Usage Restriction in System Settings), the limit is also listed in the appropriate report. You can restrict this report to a specific period of time. If timeslots are linked to a specific researcher, this will not be reflected in the report, and it will be assumed that all usage is for all researchers (for that study). See Timeslots Linked to a Specific Researcher in the Researcher Documentation for more information. Study Attendance Reports The Study Attendance Report gives a listing of the ratio of credit grants to no-shows for each study. Some organizations find such a report useful, as a study with an unusually high number of no-shows may indicate poor instructions provided by the researcher. Credit Usage Report This report lists the number of credits used by each study, by study, researcher, or P.I. It takes into account non-standard credit grants (for example, if a study is normally worth 2 credits, but a particular participant was granted only 1 credit). Researchers can grant non- standard credits if Variable Credit Granting is enabled in system settings. Otherwise, only the administrator has such a privilege. If a study has multiple researchers and you run the researcher report, then the usage for a study will be attributed to all researchers for that study (in other words, there will be double-counting). 129 Study Schedule Report If you want to look at the usage of a particular resource (timeslot locations), you may use this report will show you the use of all resources for a specific date range. This report also lists which studies are using the resource. It also makes it easy to generate a report of all studies taking place on a certain day or range of days. This report could be given to a department administrator in case a participant walks into the office and they have forgotten where their study is located. If location scheduling is enabled (see System Settings), then there is an option to view all timeslots scheduled where the researcher did not choose a location off the pre-defined list, as well as the opposite case. Online studies are not included in this report, since they don't have a location. System Summary Report The system summary report shows basic information about the amount of data in the system. You may restrict this report to a certain date range. If you do so, the date used for restriction is the date of the study's timeslot, and not of the credit grant. These two dates can vary widely, especially in the case of online studies where the timeslots may be far in the future. The report contains summary information about the number of studies of each type, and also the number of credits already granted and still available for participants to earn. This is an easy way to monitor and ensure there are enough credit-earning opportunities for participants. The prescreen/survey responses information provides a summary of how many responses are being used by the prescreen and each online survey in the system. One response is roughly equal to one response by one participant to one prescreen or online survey question. The size of this data can have an effect on the performance of your site, so it's good to keep this number as small as possible (definitely below 400,000 responses). One way to reduce this number is to delete online survey studies which are no longer being run, as the survey responses will be deleted along with it. Another easy option is to download the online survey data and then delete it, while keeping the survey and record of participation intact (see the Researcher section of the documentation). The report will also show a list of who is currently participating in the prescreen or any online surveys in the system. Each individual row in this report is updated only once every 20 minutes. Mass Email Report The Mass Email report shows a listing of all instances in the last 6 months when a bulk email facility was used by a user in the system. These emailing facilities are available to the administrator, researchers, and principal investigators, and every usage of it is logged. 130 The system logs who sent the email, to how many users, their IP (computer) address, the type of email, and the first 250 characters of the content of the email. The logging is done when using the following email facilities: Mass Email Notification (administrator-only feature), Prescreen Invitations, and when contacting participants who have signed up for a specific timeslot or study. The administrator should monitor this report on a routine basis, and warn or suspend the account privileges of users who send excessive emails. For example, it can be considered excessive if a researcher sends a prescreen invitation email to hundreds of participants on a daily basis. The reason to monitor this is that many universities will block all incoming email from the system if they notice the volume is too high or they receive complaints from recipients. Prescreen Status Reports The Prescreen report shows participants who have not completed their prescreen, either offline or offline, depending on your system configuration. If you do not have any prescreen enforcement (offline or online) enabled (see System Settings), then this report may not be listed. This report applies whether you are using online or offline (paper) prescreens as long as you have indicated that there is some method of prescreening (see System Settings). You may view the report sorted by a participant's last name or by course. Admin comments for each participant (if any) will be listed as well. If you choose to view the report ordered by course and a participant is in multiple courses, they will appear once for each course they are enrolled in. You may choose which prescreen status to report on, if the prescreen is enabled within the system. If you choose to view a report of those who have completed the prescreen, the report will also include the date that they completed it, and the time it took them to complete the prescreen (along with an average completion time at the bottom of the report). It is possible to restrict this report to only those who completed the prescreen during a certain date range. This date range restriction only applies when generating a report of those who have completed the prescreen. If you choose to view those who have started the prescreen but never completed it, this report may change over time. First, the system will routinely remove prescreen responses from participants who started the prescreen but never completed (usually if the responses are more than 24 hours old). In addition, some of the participants may be currently completing the prescreen when you generate this report, in which case shortly they will be in the report listing those who have completed the prescreen. To view a list of those currently taking the prescreen, see the System Summary Report. Course Credit History Report This report lists all studies that participants in the selected course participated in. This report is useful for archival purposes, particularly if your IRB requires you to keep archives of participation history for a number of years on file. It is good to run this report 131 before doing end-of-semester maintenance. If you choose to include credit comments, this will include the comments the researcher included regarding each sign-up (if any). When selecting a course, courses that are "active" (marked Selectable in Course Listings) will be listed first, followed by those that are inactive, when applicable. Duplicate Participant Report This report lists all participants who have the same first and last name in the system. It is useful to identify cases where a participant may have created more than one account. From this report, you can easily click on each user to see if two accounts with the same name are indeed the same person, or simply a case of two people with the same name. The report is case-insensitive, so "John Smith" and "john smith" will be considered duplicate users. Emailing a Group of Users There are situations where you may want to send a mass email to a group of users, based on certain criteria. One example is you may want to send email to all participants who have not yet completed their requirements, reminding them of an upcoming deadline. Or you may want to email all researchers to notify them of certain information. The system lets you send an email to participants, researchers, principal investigators, and instructors. When sending to participants, you may closely define what group of participants you send to, by course, studies they have participated in, credit completion status or earning level, no-show level, and/or prescreen completion status (when applicable). If you choose to email participants who have not signed up for any studies, this may be different than if you email participants who have earned 0 credits. There can be cases where a participant has signed up for studies that have not yet taken place (so they haven't earned credits yet). In all cases, you may choose to send to a random subset of selected users. This is useful in cases where you don't want to generate unnecessary interest. For example, there may be a few new studies on the site that you want to notify participants about, but notifying all the participants would be undesirable because there are not enough timeslots for even half of them to sign up. In this case, you may choose to send the notification only to a random 50% of selected users. The system does not track what random percentage of users have been emailed previously, so if you email a random 50% one time, and email a random 50% another time, there is a chance a user will be emailed twice as they will be randomly selected each time. You may also choose to exclude participants who have participated in certain studies. This is useful if you are sending an announcement about specific studies, and want to leave out those who have already participated in those studies. If you choose to email Instructors with Selectable Courses, this means the email will be sent to every instructor whose courses are marked Selectable in Course Listings. 132 If you choose to email Researchers or PIs with Active Online Survey Studies, this means the email will be sent to those Researchers/PIs with online survey studies within the system (not external web studies),which are active. Often this group of users might need special instructions or may need to be reminded that they should routinely download and delete the data they have collected from the system, to ensure ideal system performance. You must specify a message to be sent. The system will send the email with the subject "Special Announcement" and the name of the system (see System Settings), along with your message. Each email is sent so that the other recipients of the email are not revealed, for privacy reasons. If you are sending the email to participants, you may choose to have the system automatically include the participant's credit completion status (e.g. "You have completed 3 out of the 4 credits you must earn.") in the email. If you choose to receive a copy of the email and it includes credit status, then the copy sent to you will list only "X" for credit earnings and requirements, since you don't actually have any credit earnings or requirements. The credit information will be accurate when sent to participants. You cannot include attachments in the email, so if you have a document you would like to include, you should post it on a university webserver and provide a link to the document in the email you send. To use this feature, login as an administrator from the Tasks toolbar, choose Create User Messages | Mass E-Mail Notification. Figure 62 - Mass E-Mail Notification 133 You may choose what type of users to send to, and enter your message. Click Send Messages… to proceed. You will be asked to confirm that you would like to send the message. The system sends messages in groups of 300 (or less, depending on how your system is configured) at a time to prevent problems with overloading the server. You will be asked to proceed and send any additional messages, if your message was destined for more than 300 people. The system will notify you when all messages have been sent successfully. There is also an option to specify a delay in sending the email, based on the number of hours from when the emailing option is used. This is useful if you want to target a certain time of day (e.g., during the evenings) when the email will be sent. The emails are generated at the time you use the emailing facility, but are stored on the server until the specified sending time. They cannot be removed from the queue once this emailing facility is used. Summary information about the email you sent, and in particular to how many recipients it was sent to, will be logged and made available in the Mass Email report. This is done to ensure there is no abuse of the email facility in the system, in compliance with generally accepted Internet practices for sending emails. Nightly Reminder Emails If the Automatic Reminder Email feature (see System Settings) is enabled, participants will receive a reminder email of any studies they have scheduled for the following day. This email will only be sent for studies for which participants have not already received credit. Normally, participants will not have already received credit for a study before it is to occur, but this may be the case with an online study, since those do not have a scheduled participation date, but rather a participation deadline date. If anonymous ID codes are enabled on your system, the reminder will also include the participant's ID code, and a reminder that they should bring this code with them to the study. If a researcher has chosen to enable the reminder email for themselves, they will receive an email to remind them of their timeslots scheduled for the following day. They will also receive an email if they have timeslots more than 2 days old that they haven't dealt with. Customers who use this feature and run the software on their own servers should not set the emailing script to run at exactly midnight, or at any time between 11:45pm and midnight. The reason for this is that the switchover of day that occurs at midnight may cause a discrepancy about when the script determines "tomorrow" is. Customers who have their software run by Sona Systems do not need to worry about this issue, and the script is set to run at 5:00pm New York time every evening. 134 Email Security Codes In emails sent by the system to participants regarding a study sign-up, the system will usually insert a string of letters at the bottom of the email. This is a special code that can be decoded by the administrator. It contains information about which study and timeslot the email pertains to, as well as the date and time of the timeslot at the time the email was sent. It also includes the time the email was sent. This code is useful in resolving disputes where a participant claims the date or time of the study was changed or something like that. There have been cases where participants have altered the content of the email (e.g. the dates and times) and presented that as evidence that the study was changed. Even if participants alter the email, they will not be able to alter the security code. In the case of a dispute, ask them to forward the email in its entirety, and you will see the security code at the bottom of the email. To decode the security code, go to Software Support | Check Security Code and you can cross-check the information displayed therein with the email provided by the participant. In cases where the information is different between the decoded information and the information provided by the participant, this likely means that the participant altered the email content. Batch Operations There are some occasions where you may want to deactivate or activate a set of user accounts, adjust credits, email login information, or grant a non-study credit to a batch of users (often this is done when a group of participants completes an offline prescreen) in bulk. This can all be done with the Batch Operations feature, which is available from the Get/Remove Data menu choice from the Main Menu. Figure 63 - Batch Operations 135 You may specify a set of users by either their user ID or University ID number, but you must be consistent (i.e., supply only one type throughout). The IDs may be pasted into the User List box, separated by spaces. The checking of user IDs and University IDs provided is case-insensitive. If you are granting a non-study credit (available only for participants), you must specify the credit value, and a comment about the credit. This comment will be visible to participants. Because a non-study credit grant is a special case, participants will not receive an email notifying them of this credit grant, even if Credit Notification Email is enabled (see System Settings). If you choose to deactivate users (this applies to any type of user account), the chosen users' accounts will be deactivated (so they cannot log in), but not deleted. You may also adjust a participant's credit requirements by setting them to a fixed value, or increasing them by a specified value. You may also set the timeslot usage limit for specified PI's or researchers to a set value. There is also the option to email a group of users with their login information. After you choose which operation you would like to perform, you will be taken to a confirmation page so you can verify the proper users were found, and you may then continue with the task. You will have little (no) success performing such operations on participant accounts, if you are providing University ID numbers and Student ID Deactivation is set to Yes (see System Settings). In that case, there is no University (Student) ID number stored in the system for participants, so there is nothing to match on. In this situation, you should use the User ID instead. Granting Non-Study Credit There are often occasions when you want to grant a participant credit that is not associated with a study. Many schools offer participants an option to write a paper instead of participating in studies. You may also need to grant a non-study credit for some other unusual case. You can even deduct participant credit by granting them a negative number of credits (-1, -2, etc.). Partial credits are allowed, up to two decimal points of accuracy (e.g. 1.25, 0.5, etc.). To grant credit, find the participant's record by going to the Add/Edit/Search option from the Users toolbar. When you find the desired participant and click on Update, you will see an option at the bottom of the page to grant them credit. Choose the number of credits you would like to grant (type in a negative number to deduct credit). You may also assign the credit to a class, if class credit assignment is enabled (see System Settings). Finally, you may (optionally) enter comments about this credit grant ("Research Paper", etc.). The credits will be granted as soon as the changes are saved. It should be noted that an 136 email notification of this credit grant will not be sent to the participant (it is a special case), even if email credit notification is turned on (see System Settings). If you need to grant a Non-Study Credit grant to a large group of participants (typically this is done after participants complete an off-line prescreen), use the Batch Operations feature instead (in the Get/Remove Data menu). To delete a Non-Study Credit Grant, use the Delete link next to the credit you would like to delete. This appears when viewing the participant's information and a listing of the studies they have signed up for. An email notification will not be sent to the participant when the credit grant is deleted. Figure 64 - Non-Study Credit Grant Course Maintenance All participants must belong to at least one course. The system may also be configured such that participants may belong to multiple courses (see System Settings). The Course Maintenance section is accessed from Course Listings choice in the Set Up toolbar when logged in as an Administrator. Typically, you will need to set up courses when you set up the system, but very little maintenance will be required after this. If your system is configured to allow participants to create their own accounts (see System Settings), you will see a "Selectable?" Yes/No option. For each course, if you choose Yes to this option, then the course will appear as a choice on the form where participants create their own accounts. The reason you may want to prevent participants from selecting certain courses is if you've created special case courses (for instance, a "course" that contains participants who failed to complete their requirements the previous semester, from any course). As a semester ends, you may choose to keep a course listed in the system, but not make it Selectable, for historical tracking purposes. For each course, you must specify the number of (study) credits required of participants in that course. A fractional value (e.g. 1.25, 3.5) is allowed (up to two decimal places), as is the value 0 (which usually is the case when participants receive extra credit for participation but are not required to participate). If a participant is allowed to belong to 137 multiple courses (see Multiple Course Support setting in System Settings), then their credit requirements will be computed based on the value of the Multiple Course Requirements setting (see System Settings). The requirements are only computed at the time the account is created, but they can be adjusted for each individual participant if necessary (see Adding and Editing Users). If you set the requirement for a course to one value, and change it later, it will not change it for participants who are already a member of that course. The changes to a course requirement will only affect those who join that course from that point onwards. Figure 65 - Course Maintenance A delete option will appear next to eligible courses which may be deleted. Courses are eligible for deletion if no students or courses are linked to the course. The course may also be deleted if all credits linked to the course are 0 (which would be the case if participation history was retained from a previous semester). If a student is linked to a course that is deleted, they will be removed from that course. If that is the only course they were in (so that now they are in no courses), they will be asked to select a course upon their next login. In cases where removal from a course or deletion of retained sign- ups is a possibility, the word "dependencies" will be listed below the deletion option for that course. Some organizations do not have separate courses, or no courses at all, when they run their subject pool. In this situation, it is recommended to create just one "generic" course (e.g. "Participant Pool"). If there is only one course in the system, and participants are allowed to create their own accounts, they will not even see a course selection option, as they will automatically be placed into the only available course. If there are sections of the same course, it is advisable to make each a separate "course" in the system (e.g. "Psych 100 Section A", "Psych 100 Section B") if there is a reason to treat them as separate groups (often due to different instructors or different course credit requirements. If there is the opportunity for confusion, it may be advisable to further qualify the course name with the instructor's name (e.g. "Psych 100 Section A, Professor 138 Jones"). The instructor name is not automatically listed to participants, so that should be included in the course name if necessary. In general, it is not advisable to create a course with more than 1,000 participants, as this can cause certain course reports to become unwieldy and perhaps not work at all. If there are really groups this big, you should just create one course, wait until is gets reasonably large, and then create a second course for new participants (and make the old course not selectable). Likewise, creating too many courses can make things unwieldy, such as when researchers go to restrict their study to those in certain courses, and the list of courses is too large to deal with. This can also make things tough for the administrator when doing user imports of courses (since those can be done only one course at a time) and when generating Course Credit History reports. One strategy if a course has a number of small sections (i.e. less than 50 participants per section) is to combine a few sections into one course (e.g. "Psych 100, Sections A-D"). An ideal course size is 100-300 participants. For your convenience, a link to the course credit report for each course is listed on this page, just below the course name. Location Maintenance and Scheduling If location scheduling is enabled in System Settings, then the system may be used to handle the scheduling of locations (rooms/labs) when timeslots are scheduled. With such a feature, the administrator can set up a list of locations, and those locations appear on a list when researchers go to schedule their timeslots. They may pull up the schedule for a specific location, or determine which locations are available on a specific date, and schedule their timeslots appropriately. The system will prevent double-booking of locations. In the event a desired location is not in the list of locations, the researcher may enter their own text for the timeslot they are scheduling, so they are not forced to take advantage of the built-in location scheduling feature. This is useful when the researcher is using a location that would not benefit from this scheduling feature, such as a study conducted in their own office. In such a situation, the researcher does not need to worry about the location being already booked, since no one else would schedule a study in their office. The list of locations available to all researchers is set up in Location Listings, by the administrator. Each study may use only one location from the list of available locations (or researchers can type in their own text), so it is advisable to enter in locations that are as specific as possible. 139 Figure 66 - Location Setup Changes take effect immediately after they are saved. If a location is deleted and timeslots were using that location, those timeslots will remain with the same location, but the location will be treated as if the researcher manually typed it in. If a location is not marked as selectable, it will not appear in the list of available locations when researchers go to schedule a timeslot. This is useful if a location is temporarily unavailable (for example, due to renovations) but will be available again in the future. This feature is not intended as a university-wide scheduling system for all types of resources. All universities seem to have a campus-wide system in place for this. Rather, the feature within the software can be viewed more as a fail-safe mechanism to prevent researchers from double-booking the same location. End-of-Semester Maintenance The software itself does not have a concept of semesters or terms, nor does it enforce any semester concept. Your license grants you the right to use the software for as many "semesters" as you like, within the time period granted by the license. Some institutions find no need to clearly define semesters because they run an ongoing participant pool, while others find it very helpful. When the end of your term, whatever term that may be, occurs, there is some end of semester maintenance you might like to perform. Typical end-of-semester maintenance would involve exporting a copy of the data for archival purposes, then clearing it out of the system in bulk, in preparation for the start of a new term. At a minimum, most institutions clear out all the participant accounts and sometimes the studies, though they usually leave the researcher accounts if those stay the same from term-to-term. You also have the option of retaining key data and carrying it over, specifically participation data. 140 This is useful if you want to prevent a participant from participating again in a study they participated in during the previous term. The participation history retention option will reset the credits earned (and any no-shows) to 0 for the timeslots where participation history is retained. If a sign-up as marked as a penalty-earning no-show, it will be converted to a no-penalty no-show but its previous status will be marked in the comments for that sign-up. It should be noted that once you clear out this data, it cannot be retrieved. Use this feature carefully, as it deletes large amounts of data. It might be useful to make some backups of the data, for example running Course Credit History reports and maybe making a copy of the prescreen responses. After doing end-of-semester maintenance, you should look at a few studies and participant accounts (where applicable) to make sure the data is in the state you expected it to be in after running the maintenance. If you notice a problem, please contact Sona Systems Technical Support immediately (email is the fastest way to reach us), and ask us if we can restore a backup of your site and let us know when the accidental deletion occurred. Backups are made once a day, so we can likely restore your site to a backup made earlier that day. Note that if you choose this option, all changes made since the backup will be lost. If you wait more than one day to request that we restore your database, there is a chance we may not have a backup made many days earlier. In general, we maintain backups for the last 5 calendar days, but no longer than that. It is important to note that a participant's online survey responses (if the online survey is in the system) are connected to their sign-up for that online survey study. So, if you delete either the participant's account, or their sign-up (participation history), then their online survey responses will also be deleted. Researchers should get in the habit of routinely downloading and deleting (from the system) survey responses collected for their studies. This is not only good data storage practice, but the system performs better with fewer online survey responses stored in the system. Exporting Data While the data export feature is typically used at the end of the semester, you may use it at any time, as many times as you like. Exporting data will not erase it from the system. Use the end-of-semester maintenance feature to clear out old data (documented in the next section) if you would like to delete mass amounts of data from the system. The data export feature lets you export entire sets of data, in standard comma-separated (CSV) format. CSV is a standard form which most programs, including Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access, can understand and work with properly. If the data originally contained any carriage-returns (this is rare), then these will be stripped out from the CSV as it makes it difficult for programs to properly import the data when there are carriage- returns in the data. 141 As the data export may contain sensitive information, you should handle the data you export carefully. See the Regulatory Compliance section in this documentation for more information. The system allows you to export the CSV-formatted data in either Archival or Analysis format. The Archival format is "normalized" data, and makes it easier to import the data into a database system like Microsoft Access. It is also a format that is useful if the data ever needs to be recovered back into the system. The Analysis format is useful for importing the data into a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel, for data analysis. It contains "de-normalized" data that makes it easier to analyze. If you are not sure which format is best, you can always export the data in both formats. To start the data export, make sure you are logged in as an administrator, and go to Get/Remove Data | Data Export from the Administrator toolbar. You will see a list of choices for the type of data (tables) you can export, and what data is included in each export. If you want to export all the data for archival purposes, you should make sure to export every table, in Archival Format. When you click a link for the type of data and format you would like to export, one of three scenarios will happen in your web browser, depending on how your web browser is configured. Listed below is what you should do depending on how your browser responds. When saving data, it is recommended you save the files with a ".CSV" extension. 1. The data loads in Microsoft Excel. To save the data, choose File | Save As.. and save it as a CSV file or an Excel worksheet (your choice). If the file loads and the data does not line up into the columns properly, save it (instead of opening with Excel), then open the file with Excel (directly through Excel). 2. The browser asks if you would like to save the file. Save the file with a .CSV extension. 3. The browser loads the file on your screen, but not in Excel. Save the file with a .CSV extension, using the File | Save or File | Save As.. feature in your browser. Be sure to save it as text, not HTML format. There is a lot of data that can be exported, and it may be cumbersome. In most cases, the only information that really needs to be kept on file is a list of participants, the studies they participated in, and their credit status. If this is the case, the Course Credit History report will have all this information and is much easier to print and store on file. Many IRBs require that this information is retained in hard-copy (printed) format for a certain number of years. Clearing Out Old Data After you have made a backup copy of data with the Data Export feature, you may elect to clear out (erase) old data. You have two options for this: (basic) End-of-Semester Maintenance and Advanced End-of-Semester Maintenance. 142 If you just want to delete all data from the system, or some subset of that (for example, deleting all participants), it is easier to use basic end-of-semester maintenance. If you have special needs, like retaining participation history or performing maintenance on a course-by-course basis, then Advanced End-of-Semester Maintenance will be a better option. Basic End-of-Semester Maintenance This is accessed by going to Get/Remove Data | End-of-Semester Maintenance. You will be given a number of choices of what types of data to delete or modify. Listed below is a description of those options, and what data may be deleted or modified as part of that option. Not all options may appear on your system, depending on how your system is configured. You may end up using a number of the options below. Option Data That Is Deleted or Modified Participants Delete All Participants All participant account data is deleted, as well as their credits, sign-up information, online survey responses, and prescreen responses. Delete All Except Incomplete Participants All the same data is deleted as for All Participants, but only for participants who have earned at least as many credits as they are required to earn. Delete All Participants without Courses All the same data is deleted as for All Participants, but only for participants who are not currently a member of any course. Delete All Deactivated Participants All the same data is deleted as for All Participants, but only for participants who are currently deactivated (not allowed to login to the system). Idle Participant Deactivation This will deactivate (remove their right to login) all participants who have not logged in since a specified date. Note that login tracking has only been a feature of the system since August 2006, so any participants who have not logged in since that time will also be deactivated. No data will be deleted. Idle Participant Deletion This will delete (remove all data associated with them) all participants who have not logged in since a specified date. Note that login tracking has only been a feature of the system since August 2006, so any participants who have not logged in since that time will also be deleted. For these idle participants, the same data will be deleted 143 as is deleted with the Delete All Participants option above, though only for the idle participants. Delete All Idle Participants This will delete (remove all data associated with them) all participants who have never logged in. Note that login tracking has only been a feature of the system since August 2006, so any participants who have not logged in since that time will also be deleted. For these idle participants, the same data will be deleted as is deleted with the Delete All Participants option above, though only for the idle participants. Deactivate All Participants All participant accounts are deactivated so they may not login to the system, but all their information is retained. Activate All Participants All participant accounts are activated so they may login to the system. All their information is retained. Reset Login Days of All Participants Set login days of all participants to 0. Login days is a measure of the number of unique days that a participant logged in. Reset All Manually Limited Accounts Resets all participant accounts that were manually limited (so that they could only sign up for research alternative studies) to automatic. By setting to automatic, they will be limited based on accrued unexcused no-shows (see No-Show Account Limit in System Setttings). Delete All No-Shows Deletes all no-shows (excused and unexcused) and resets the unexcused no- show count to 0. Accounts which were automatically limited due to accrued unexcused no-shows will have the limit removed. Convert All No-Shows Converts all unexcused no-shows to excused no-shows. This also resets the unexcused no-show count to 0. Accounts which were automatically limited due to accrued unexcused no-shows will have the limit removed. Researchers Delete All Researchers All researchers, their studies, sign-ups, timeslots, and participant sign-up data is deleted. Delete All Researchers without Studies All researchers who have no studies will be 144 deleted. Idle Researcher Deletion This will delete (remove all data associated with them) all researchers who have not logged in since a specified date, and who have no studies. Note that login tracking has only been a feature of the system since August 2006, so any researchers who have not logged in since that time will also be deleted. Deactivate All Researchers All researcher accounts are deactivated so they may not login to the system, but all their information is retained. Activate All Researchers All researcher accounts are activated so they may login to the system. All their information is retained. Principal Investigators Delete All Principal Investigators All principal investigators, their studies, sign-ups, timeslots, and participant sign-up data is deleted. Delete All Principal Investigators without All principal investigators who have no Studies studies will be deleted. Deactivate All Principal Investigators All principal investigator accounts are deactivated so they may not login to the system, but all their information is retained. Activate All Principal Investigators All principal investigator accounts are activated so they may login to the system. All their information is retained. Instructors Delete All Instructors All instructor accounts are deleted. If they were listed as an instructor for a course, the course remains but with no instructor. Delete All Instructors without Courses All instructor accounts where the instructor is no listed as an instructor for any course are deleted. Deactivate All Instructors All instructor accounts are deactivated so they may not login to the system, but all their information is retained. Activate All Instructors All instructor accounts are activated so they may login to the system. All their information is retained. Studies and Timeslots Delete All Studies All studies, sign-ups, timeslots, survey responses, and participant sign-up data for studies is deleted. Delete All Studies, Preserve Online Survey This is the same as Delete All Studies, Study Questions except online survey studies are retained 145 along with their questions. Note that the survey responses are not retained, and any pre-requisite or disqualifier settings for the studies are also removed. This option is useful if researchers do not want to be forced to set up their online survey studies from scratch, but there is still a need to clear out data in the system. Old Timeslot Deletion, Empty Timeslots Delete all timeslots within a specified date range that do not have any sign-ups. Old Timeslot Deletion, All Timeslots Delete all timeslots within a specified date range, even if there are sign-ups. If you do this, records of the sign-ups will be lost, along with any survey response data collected. Timeslots which are unexcused no-shows will not be deleted – to delete those, first convert them to excused no- shows or delete them (see relevant options in the Participants section on this same page). No-Show Deletion Delete all zero-credit no-shows (both excused and unexcused) older than the date specified. This is useful if you want to start participants off with a "clean slate" in terms of no-show accruals, though there are options that may be better in Advanced End-of-Semester Maintenance, and on this page in the Participants section. Participant accounts which were automatically limited due to accruing too many unexcused no-shows (see No-Show Handling) will have the limit removed if the deletion of no-shows takes them below the limit. Adjust All Studies Adjust all studies at once, including whether they are approved, active, IRB expiration date, and any timeslot usage quotas on the studies. Prescreens Delete All Prescreen Information All prescreen responses, prescreen questions, and study restrictions based on prescreens. See Deleting a Prescreen for more information. Delete All Prescreen Responses Delete all prescreen responses, but keep prescreen intact. Doing so will require 146 participants to complete the prescreen again next time they login, assuming it is available. Credit earned for the prescreen will not be removed. Timeslot Usage Quota Adjustment Set the timeslot usage quota for all researchers or P.I.'s to a specific value, or to a specific value above their current usage level. This only applies if timeslot usage quotas are implemented at this level (see System Settings). The Old Timeslot Deletion choice is useful when you normally retain participation history, but want to delete very old timeslots as those are no longer worth retaining, while retaining older timeslots that aren't quite as old. You may choose either to delete only empty timeslots (timeslots which had no participants signed up), or all timeslots within the specified date range. Note that you can only delete old timeslots that had sign-ups if the timeslots were previously archived with participation history retention (see Advanced End-of-Semester Maintenance), which means the credit and no-show values for the sign- ups were set to 0. Empty timeslots (timeslots with no sign-ups) are routinely deleted by the system automatically, after those timeslots are more than 3 months old. As you can see from the table above, large amounts of data are deleted or modified when using these options. Use these options carefully. When you choose any of the options, you will be given a warning and a notice of how many records will be affected, with the choice to proceed. In particular, note that deleting a participant will delete all data associated with them, including any online survey data they provided. Despite the many options the option that is by far most popular and will meet most needs is Delete All Participants and then Delete All Studies. This deletes all the sign-up history and credit history, allowing for a fresh start. If the options provided don't exactly match how you would like to handle data at the end of the semester, please contact Sona Systems Technical Support to have the maintenance done for you. It is also possible that you need to use more than one of the options to do exactly what you need. The Advanced End-of-Semester Maintenance options (described below) may be better suited to your needs. Advanced End-of-Semester Maintenance If you have special needs in terms of end-of-semester maintenance, the options in Advanced End-of-Semester Maintenance are likely the best options to use. This can be accessed by going to Get/Remove Data | Advanced End-of-Semester Maintenance. You may choose to perform the operations only on participants (students) in a specific course. You may also choose to retain certain data and carry it forward. The most common reason to use Advanced End of Semester Maintenance is when sign-up data needs to be retained so that participants cannot sign up for the same study again. 147 If you choose a specific course, and a participant is in more than one course, the operation will affect all their courses. For example, if you choose to delete all participants in Course A and a participant is also in Course B, they will be deleted. Use these options with caution. If you choose to delete a participant, all data associated with that participant, including their online survey and prescreen responses, will be deleted. If you choose to delete a participant's participation history, their online survey responses for any online surveys associated with their participation history will also be deleted. In addition, all records of their participation in studies will be deleted. The Delete Participants option, if chosen, will delete all participants in the selected course. This will delete their account and all information connected to it entirely. If you choose this option, all the other options on the form are ignored as they do not apply. The remaining 5 options apply if you choose not to delete the specified participants. These options assume you will be retaining the accounts of the specified participants, and then give you options about what to do with each part of participants' records. Option Description Credits Earned This option maps to the Credits Earned value of a participant's record. If you choose to retain their credits earned value, then you will also need to choose to retain their credit history and associated credits. If you choose not to retain their credits earned value, then you will need to either delete their participation history, or retain it and zero out the credit values. Credits Needed This option maps to the Credits Needed value of a participants record. If you choose to retain this value, you must also choose to keep them in their current courses. If you choose to have this recomputed based on the courses they are in, then you must also choose to remove them from their current courses. Course Associations This option maps to the Courses a participant is a member of. If you choose to remove them from their current courses, then you must also choose to have their credits needed recomputed based on the courses they are in. Participants will be 148 asked to choose course(s) from the list of courses marked Selectable in Course Listings, on their next login. If you choose to keep them in their current courses, then you must also choose to retain the current credits needed value. Participation History The option maps to the "line-items" regarding each sign-up for each study a participant participated in. If this is deleted, then all records associated with the participant's sign-up (including responses to an online survey study, and no-shows) will also be deleted. It is useful to retain this information when a study runs for many terms, and the researcher wants to ensure that a participant who participated in a previous term cannot participate again. In that case, it's best to choose to retain participation history. If the credits do not need to be carried over (they rarely do, as doing so may provide the opportunity for a participant to reassign them to their new courses), then it's best to choose to zero out the credit values. If a study has only signups with zero credit values, then it is eligible for deletion by the administrator. If this option is chosen, then the former credit or penalty value, along with the course the credit was assigned to (when applicable), will be placed in the comments of the signup (for later reference), while the actual credit will be zeroed out. If a course name is too long to fit in the comments field, it will be shortened to fit within the allocated space. No-Shows Generally, there is no reason to retain no- show information from semester-to- semester, unless credits are also being carried over. If you delete no-shows (this applies to both unexcused and excused no-shows), or convert unexcused no-shows to excused 149 no-shows, this will affect (lower) the unexcused no-show tally for participants. This is useful if participants face account limitations for accruing too many unexcused no-shows (see No-Show Handling), but they should start with a clean record for the next semester. If an account was automatically limited for accruing too many unexcused no-shows (see No-Show Account Limit in System Settings), then deleting or converting the no-shows (to excused) will remove the limit that was in place. If you choose to delete participation history (the previous option), this will also delete no-show information. While there are a lot of options here, the three most popular options are: 1. Delete Participants 2. Do not delete participants, change credits earned to 0, recompute credits needed, remove from courses, delete participation history, delete no-shows. This results in retaining the login information for participants but deletes all their credit information and removes them from their courses, and it also resets their unexcused no-show count back to zero. This requires them to select new course(s) upon their next login. 3. Do not delete participants, change credits earned to 0, recompute credits needed, remove from courses, retain participation history but zero out credits, delete no- shows. This results in retaining the login information and record of which studies a participant participated in (along with their survey responses, if it was an online survey study), while deleting their no-shows, but also removes the credits from those studies and requires them to select new course(s) upon their next login. This prevents them from re-using the credits again. If you choose options which result in the participant's account being retained, but you would like them to complete the prescreen again, you can go to (Basic) End of Semester Maintenance and choose the Delete All Prescreen Responses option. Monitoring Studies As an administrator, there may be occasions when you need to modify or monitor a study. You might need to deactivate a study that was activated due to a recent IRB approval revocation. Alternatively, you may need to grant credit to a participant because the researcher failed to do so. To view and modify studies, choose the View All option from the Studies toolbar. You will see a list of all studies, and you can change anything 150 about them just as if you were the researcher. Read the researcher documentation for more information on researcher features. As the administrator, you may also search for a specific study by name, by typing part of the study's name into the Filter box (Studies | View All) and clicking Apply. The search performed is case-insensitive, and will search for the selected text anywhere within the study name (a substring search). Checking Study Configuration Sometimes researchers may claim that their study is not visible to participants, or is only visible to a few participants. This is likely due to a configuration error on their part. For example, they may have set such narrow prescreen participation restrictions that only a few participants qualify. Another scenario is they may claim a specific participant tried to sign up for the study but did not see it or was instructed by the system that they did not qualify. To solve the problem, you (but not researchers) may go to Check Study Configuration, which is an option when viewing a study. When you first go to that page, it will show both General Configuration and Specific Configuration items. The General Configuration items refer to general study configuration items which are not specific to any participant. For example, regardless of which participant is involved, a study must have a timeslot available in order for the participant to sign up. If a study is a two-part study, the system will check to see that there are available timeslots for both parts of the study, and also that there is at least one available second-part timeslot to match up with a first-part timeslot. Sometimes, researchers may set up a two-part study with specific day separation restrictions between the two parts, but then not add second-part timeslots that are in the dates to meet that day separation. The specific configuration refers to configuration items which may prevent some (but perhaps not all) participants from seeing or signing up for the study. These are items like prescreen participation restrictions or an invitation code. This provides some information about what restrictions are in place. Then if you would like to see why a specific participant can or cannot sign up for the study, there is an option to type in their user ID and the system will provide information about why that specific participant is or is not qualified for the study. Batch Study Updates If you would like to modify key attributes about many studies at once, you may do so using the Batch Study Update feature. This allows you to adjust whether a study is active and/or approved, the study's timeslot usage limit (if applicable) and the study's IRB expiration date for any studies you select, all at once. The IRB expiration date will only show it Strict IRB Mode is enabled in System Settings. Studies where the IRB expiration date is in the past (i.e., already expired) will be listed in red. 151 To access this feature, click on View All Studies and choose the Batch Study Update. Adjust the studies as you desire, and click Save Changes to save your changes. You may also adjust all studies at once to the same specified setting or value using the options at the bottom of the page. You may also choose to view only studies that need approval. Finally, there is an option to email researchers notifying them that their study was approved. This email will only be sent if the study was in fact just approved, and was not previously approved. Figure 67 - Batch Study Update Batch Study Deletion Think carefully before using this feature. Usually, instead of deleting studies selectively, it is better to do end-of-semester maintenance. That is the proper way of wrapping things up at the end of the semester, in terms of clearing our or properly archiving credits. It is fairly common just to delete all studies (easily done in end-of-semester maintenance) at the end of every year or semester, unless there are studies that run longer than that. To access this feature, click on View All Studies and choose the Batch Study Delete option. You will see a list of studies eligible for deletion. A study is eligible for deletion if it has no pending sign-ups (sign-ups awaiting action), and has no (non-zero) credit grants linked to it. Generally, the reason a study does not appear on this list is that it has credit grants linked to it. The best way to clear the credit grants linked to a study is to do end-of-semester maintenance. You can choose to either delete participants (which removes their sign-up data for studies and thus credit grants), or retain their accounts but zero-out their participation history (this is an option in Advanced End-of-Semester Maintenance). Additional information about each study is also listed. The date of the most recent available timeslot is listed, but be aware the study may have more recent timeslots that are full. If a date is listed that is in the future, this is an indicator that the study may still be running, so you should be careful before deleting it. It's best to click on each study 152 and review it before deciding to delete it. The IRB expiration date (when applicable) is also listed, as knowing that a study's IRB approval expired a while ago may be an indicator that it is a strong candidate for deletion. For system performance reasons, you may delete up to 10 studies at a time. If you need to delete more studies, simply go to the feature again and choose additional studies. Updating System Text There are a few areas in the system where you may specify text to be displayed on-screen or included in an email notification. All of these can be set by going to Create User Messages | Update System Text. All are optional, and you may just leave them blank if you desire. Each item has a limit of 15,000 characters. Some of the items allow you to specify basic HTML (and are noted appropriately), and a basic HTML guide is included on the screen. On the items that allow for HTML, if you would like to include a link to a website, you can use a simple HTML link. For example, if you would like to link to http://www.myschool.edu/rules.html , you would use this HTML text: <A TARGET="_blank" HREF="http://www.myschool.edu/rules.html">Link Here</A> The text above should appear on one line (i.e., without any carriage returns), and can be modified if needed. All changes take effect immediately after you save the changes. The text you may change includes: • The text that is included in the email sent to participants when their account is created. Here you may want to let them know about any special instructions that they as new participants may not already be aware of. • The text that is displayed on the page where participants may request their own account (Participant Account Self-Creation is enabled in System Settings). Here you may want to outline any policies the participant must adhere to by registering with the system. • The text that is displayed on the front page of the site (just above the login box). Here you may want to list any special announcements or login instructions. • The text that is displayed when participants view the Human Subjects/Privacy Policy. • The text that is displayed to participants on the page where they view the list of available studies. • The text that is displayed on the page where participants view their credit status. Here you may want to remind them of any special policies. • The text that is displayed on the page where researchers can request approval of their study. Here you may want to remind them of how studies should be properly set up according to your policies, and also what information they should include in their approval request. 153 • The text included in the email that is sent when a participant signs up for a student. This email is only sent if sign-up confirmation emails are enabled in system settings. • The text included in the email that is sent when a participant is granted credit for a study. The email is only sent if Credit Notification is enabled in System Settings. • The text included in the email that is sent when a participant is marked as an unexcused no-show. The email is only sent if Credit Notification is enabled in System Settings. This is a great place to remind participants of any consequences from accruing an unexcused no-show. • The text included in the email that is sent when a participant's account is Limited (may only sign up for research alternative studies) due to accruing excessive no- shows. This email is only sent if No-Show Account Limit is enabled in System Settings. • The text included in emails notifying a participant when a researcher has cancelled their sign-up for a study. This may be useful to notify a participant of any special rights they have when the researcher has chosen to cancel their sign- up. • The text displayed at the bottom of every page on the site, along with the administrator's email address. This will contain default text of "Email questions to" but can be changed if necessary. Figure 68 – Updating System Text Frequently Asked Questions Feature The easiest way to provide users with answers to common questions is through the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) feature. Using the FAQ feature, you may enter a set 154 of questions and answers, and specify for each entry what group of users is allowed to see that item. For example, you may want to restrict certain entries so only researchers (and not participants) may see them. As an administrator, you may view the FAQ for all types of users. Researchers and principal investigators may view the participant FAQ. In all other cases, the users may only view the FAQ for their own user type. The FAQ will only appear as an option for users if there is a FAQ available. For example, if there is no instructor FAQ, then the link will not appear for instructors. To update and add new items to the FAQ, login as an administrator and go to Create User Messages| Frequently Asked Questions from the Tasks toolbar. From there, you may view all FAQ entries, and add, update, or delete entries. You may include HTML in the FAQ answer area, but please be sure you know what you are doing. If you would like to add a carriage-return (paragraph break), simply type in "<p>" (without the quotes). Each answer has a limit of 15,000 characters. Requesting Technical Support The software features an automated support request feature. If you have a problem or question about the software, choose the Software Support | Contact Technical Support option, which is in the Administrator toolbar. Enter your email address and a description of your problem. You may also choose to have login information sent to Sona Systems to aid in troubleshooting the problem you may be having. When using this form, please provide as much detail about the problem as possible. For example, reporting a problem like "A researcher said some participant was not able to cancel some timeslot." is not very helpful, while including all relevant information, like study name, timeslot date, etc. makes it a lot easier for us to provide an accurate response. 155 There is also a link to a system diagnostics page. If your software is installed on-site, you may find this page useful in providing basic diagnostics to verify that your system is properly installed. You will also see an option to test out the email feature within the system to verify that it is working. You can enter any destination email address, and the system will send an email to that address. This is a good way to verify that emails are indeed working. In nearly all cases, when there are reports of emails from the system not being received, it is simply that the email did arrive but was misfiled in the user's junk mail folder. Figure 69 - Technical Support Request Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) I have a few people who act in multiple roles (e.g. researcher and administrator). How should I create their account in the system? You should create two accounts for them, as each user type has a different set of privileges. See the Duplicate User IDs section of this documentation for more information. I would like to deduct or add credit from a participant. How do I do this? The easiest way is through the non-study credit grant feature. You have the option to grant a negative credit if you would like to deduct credit, or you may grant a positive credit. See the Granting Non-Study Credit section of this documentation for more information. A participant failed to show up for a study and did not properly cancel, but there were extenuating circumstances and we would not like to penalize the participant. How should this be handled? 156 Researchers should take some action on every study timeslot that has occurred. If you system is configured to assess penalty credits, then the researcher will have the option to indicate the participant did not show, and whether the no-show was worthy of a penalty (in this case, it is not). If your system is not configured to assess penalty credits, then the researcher should indicate the participant was a no-show. The reason to always properly indicate a no-show for a participant is that the system makes certain pre-requisite enforcement decisions (and other decisions) that depend on whether the participant participated in the study or was a no-show. You may also cancel the participant's sign-up, if appropriate. I want to change the number of credits a participant must complete, for a particular participant (as opposed to changing the default setting). How do I do this? Edit the participant's record (see Editing Users) and you can adjust their credit requirements. Partial credits are allow up to two decimal points of accuracy (e.g. 0.5, 1.25, etc.). Participants go to create their own accounts, but no courses show up on the account request form and they seen an error instead. What is wrong? You need to create at least one course that is Selectable. See Course Maintenance in this documentation for more information. I would like to export a copy of the data, for archival purposes. How do I do this? You can use the Data Export feature for this, at any time. See Exporting Data in this documentation for more information. One of our researchers works for a different organization, and thus they do not have an email account in our organization's email system. How do I setup their account? When you create their account, choose a username that is not already used and is not a currently valid email account. Then, specify their real email address (at the other organization) in the Alternate Email field. By specifying the alternate email address, the alternate email address will be the address that is visible to other users of the system. Can there be different sign-up or cancellations deadlines for each study? Yes, if study-level deadlines are enabled on your site (see System Settings). 157 System Settings System settings are accessed from the System Settings choice on the Set Up toolbar. You must be logged in as an Administrator to access this option. Figure 70 - System Settings System settings are organized into two sections. The first section contains settings that may be changed while there is data in the system. The second section contains settings that should only be changed if there is no data in the system. Do not change this second group of settings at any other time, as it can lead to corruption of data, as well as unexplainable results. If you absolutely must change a system setting from the second section while there is data in the system, contact Sona Systems technical support first and they will provide guidance on how to safely change these settings. In many cases you will be given the OK to make the change on your own, but it depends on how you'd like to change the setting (from what to what), so please include that information as well. Changes to system settings are logged, and a record of the last 50 changes is kept. You may view this at System Settings Changes when going to System Settings. Note that the logs use the internal codes for each setting name and value, so if you have trouble interpreting the meaning, please contact Sona Systems Support for an explanation. System settings are accessed from the System Settings choice on the Set Up toolbar. The form provides an easy method to change any settings. Changes you make will be reflected immediately after you save the changes. All settings below are required unless otherwise noted. Settings That You May Change at Any Time 158 Setting Name Description Site Name The name of the system. This is used throughout the system as the header/banner at the top of the screen. It is also the From: name on emails generated by the system. Most organizations choose a name that includes "System" at the end (e.g. "Research Participation System") but such a naming convention is not mandatory. Site URL The URL (web address) for the site. This is used in emails sent to users with their login information, and in some other places throughout the system. The URL should start with the conventional http:// to indicate it is a URL. If you would like to change the address of your site, please contact technical support as this will require some adjustments on the server. Banner URL The URL (web address) for the banner/masthead image that appears at the top of every page on the site. If the image is located on a server different from the software, it should start with http://. If it is located on the same server as the system, it may be a "relative" URL and will likely start with "/". Banner images may be of any size, but the recommended size is 500 pixels wide and 85 pixels tall, in JPG or GIF format. Human Subject Policy URL This field is optional. If your organization has a URL for its policy on human subject research and/or or its privacy policy, then you can place the URL here. The URL should start with "http://". If provided, this link will be provided to all logged-in users in the Human Subjects/Privacy Policy link at the bottom of every page. Human Subject Research This field is optional. If not provided, the Contact Administrator Email address will be used. This is a free-form field, so you can type in as much contact information as necessary. One example value would be "John Smith, firstname.lastname@example.com, 415-555-1212, Smith Hall 332". This information is listed in the Human Subjects/Privacy Policy link at the bottom of every page. Administrator From Email A special email address which forwards to the administrator. This is used as the From (sender) address on all system-generated emails, including credit notifications, password reminders, and study reminders. The email address usually ends in @sona- systems.net, and this is done to get around junk mail 159 filters at many universities, which do not like if it a non-university server (like ours) generates emails with a university email address. When the system sends email where the From address is an @sona-systems.net address, then these emails are specially signed by both DomainKeys and DKIM, and are both Sender ID and SPF compliant. These techniques are invisible to the user, but make it more likely that the email will not be misclassified as junk mail. If there is an @sona-systems.net email address specified here, then email sent there will forward automatically to the email address specified in the Administrator Reply-To Email setting (see below). Administrator Reply-To The email address where users should write if they Email have questions about the system (i.e., the administrator's email address). This is likely a university email address, and cannot be an @sona- systems.net address. Automated emails from the system will have this email address specified as the "reply-to" address, which means when a user responds to such an email, their response will go to the Administrator Reply-To address. This address is also displayed at the bottom of every page on the site, so users can easily contact the administrator if they have any questions. In some user-initiated emails, like if a researcher is sending a prescreen participation invitation, the reply- to address will be set to that of the user initiating the email. Participant Human Subject Yes or No value to indicate if participants must Policy Acknowledgment acknowledge the Human Subjects/Privacy Policy before they may use the system. If set to Yes, they must acknowledge it once every 6 months, and their acknowledgment status will be listed in their record when the Administrator views it. If you handle this type of acceptance before-hand (on paper, for instance), then it is usually not necessary to enable this feature. Researcher Human Subject Yes or No value to indicate if researchers and principal Policy Acknowledgment investigators (when applicable) must acknowledge the Human Subjects/Privacy Policy before they may use the system. If set to Yes, they must acknowledge it once every 6 months, and their acknowledgment status will be listed in their record when the Administrator views it. If you handle this type of acceptance before- 160 hand (on paper, for instance), then it is usually not necessary to enable this feature. Human Subject Policy Type Choose the research and privacy regulations that your organization must comply with. The choices are United States (HIPAA and Common Rule), United States (Common Rule only), Canada (PIPEDA and Tri- Council Statement, European Union (OECD and EU Directive), or Australian (OECD). The system will automatically adjust the policies based on your selection. IRB Name The name of the group that approves studies. Usually called an IRB, REB, or HSB. The name may be up to 20 characters, and this name will be used when identifying the IRB to researchers and participants. Use of an acronym is recommended to save screen space. Default Study Length The default length of time for a study, in minutes. Researchers may change this value on a study-by-study basis. Sign-Up Time Threshold The latest time before a study is to occur that a participant may sign up for a study. You may choose a rolling time window (e.g. 24 hours before the study is scheduled to occur), a fixed time (e.g. 5pm the day before), or allow this to be specified on a per-study basis. The fixed time setting always indicates the day before the study is to occur. Cancellation Time Threshold The latest time before a study is to occur that a participant may cancel their sign-up for a study. You may choose a rolling time window (e.g. 24 hours before the study is scheduled to occur), a fixed time (e.g. 5pm the day before), or allow this to be specified on a per-study basis. The fixed time setting always indicates the day before the study is to occur. Time Threshold Includes Yes or No value to indicate if the system should factor Weekends in weekends when enforcing the sign-up and cancellation time limits. If set to Yes, then a deadline that would ordinarily occur on a weekend is pushed back to the Friday before the weekend. The system will push back the deadline in full days, so a rolling time window threshold that would occur at 2:30pm on Sunday would be moved to 2:30pm on Friday. If set to No, the deadline may occur on a weekend. Random Study Order Yes or No value to indicate if the system should list studies (to participants) in random or alphabetical (by study name) order. All non-participants will always see studies listed in alphabetical order. 161 If random order is chosen, the list of studies is randomly listed every time a participant views the list of available studies. Credit Display Yes or No value to indicate if the credit value for studies should be listed on the study listing page, for participants. The credit value will always be visible once a participant clicks on a study to learn more about it. The reason to disable the credit display from the main study listing page is if there is a concern that participants are more or less likely to view studies that have a higher credit value. If set to Yes, the credit value will be displayed on the study listing page. Available Study Display Yes or No value to indicate if all (active, approved) studies should be displayed to participants when they go to view the list of studies. If set to No, then only those studies with available timeslots will be listed. It may be useful to set this to Yes if there are frequent changes in timeslot availability and you want to make a participant aware of studies even if there are no timeslots available at the moment. Online Study Display Yes or No value to indicate if on the list of studies displayed to participants, participants can see immediately if the study is an online study. If this is set to No, there will be no indication on the page listing all the studies to participants that the study is an online study. This may help to reduce selection bias. Regardless of this setting, once the participant clicks on a specific study, they will see at that point if it is an online study, as they need to know this for logistical reasons. Participant Progress Display The starting date to display activity when a participant views their progress. Activity prior to this date will not be displayed unless the participant clicks an option to do so. This is useful to avoid clutter and confusion on this page, if older studies are kept in the system for archival purposes. Pre-Requisite/Disqualifier Yes or No value to indicate if participants can see the Display study pre-requisites and disqualifiers for a study. If set to Yes, then when participants view a study with study pre-requisites or disqualifiers, they will see the list of those studies and also whether or not they satisfy each requirement. If set to No, then the system will indicate that they are not eligible due to study pre-requisite or disqualifier restrictions, but not state which studies are the reason they do not qualify. 162 The benefit to setting this to No is if there is a risk to the research quality if participants know what studies are related. The benefit to setting this to Yes is that there are likely to be fewer support emails from participants asking why they cannot sign up for a certain study. The Pre-Requisite feature must be set to Yes for this setting to work. Variable Credit Grant Yes or No value to indicate if researchers can grant partial credit to a participant for study participation. If set to Yes, researchers can grant from 0 credits to 2 times the study's credit value. This is useful when a study runs longer than expected or a participant leaves the study early. The range of credit values can be granted depends on the Credit Increment setting. Instructor Study Viewing Yes or No value to indicate if instructors can view the studies available in the system. This is useful if instructors would like to know what studies are available so they can integrate such information into their instruction. Even if this feature is enabled, instructors still cannot see any timeslots nor who has signed up for the study, for privacy reasons. If set to No, instructors may not view any studies. Instructor Credit Grant Yes or No value to indicate if instructors can grant non- study credit grants to participants (students) in their courses. This feature is useful if credit for a research participation alternative is handled directly by the instructor. If set to No, this feature will not be available to instructors, but still remains available to the administrator. Sign-Up/Cancellation A choice indicating if the system should email a Confirmation Email participant with a confirmation of their study sign-up, immediately after they sign up. It can also be sent when the participant cancels their sign-up. Note that when someone other than the participant cancels the sign-up (e.g. the administrator or researcher), a confirmation email is always sent since the participant may not otherwise be aware of it. Daily Schedule Contact The email address of the person who should receive an email listing all appointment scheduled for the following day. This can be useful to have sent to someone working at the front desk of the department, in case a participant comes in and has forgotten in which room their study takes place. The information in 163 this email is similar to the Study Schedule Report. You may provide only one email address. If you want this email to go to more than one person, ask your IT department to set up a special email address (commonly called a forwarder or alias) that sends to multiple users via one email address. This field is optional. Automatic Reminder Email Yes or No value indicating if the system should send a reminder email to participants the day before they are scheduled to participate in a study. If set to yes, an email will be sent automatically the day before their appointment. Automatic Reminder Email The number of hours the system should hold the study Delay reminder emails in the queue before sending them. This is useful if participants are more likely to pay attention to an email if it is received at a certain time of day. The emails are usually sent at 5pm New York time, except for customers in Europe and the Middle East whose sites do not have SSL enabled (then it is sent 5 hours earlier, at 12pm New York time). If a delay is specified, the emails will still be generated at that time, but will be held in the email server queue until the specified delay is reached. Credit Notification Email Yes or No value indicating if the system should send an email to the participant when they are granted (or revoked) credit for a study. If set to Yes, an email will be sent. This applies to all studies for credit, and to paid studies only when the participant is marked as an unexcused no-show, and the No-Show Account Limit is enabled. No-Show Account Limit A numeric value indicating after how many unexcused no-shows a participant's account is automatically Limited so that they may only sign up for studies marked as research alternatives. If set to any value above 0, the system will set the account to Limited as soon as the participant accumulates or exceeds the specified unexcused no-show value. An email is sent to the participant when this occurs. An email will also be sent to the administrator, if the Administrator No-Show Notification Email is set appropriately. Administrator No-Show A numeric value indicating after how many unexcused Notification Email no-shows a participant receives should the administrator be notified by email. Some schools like 164 to disable a participant's account or limit them to only research alternative studies after they accumulate a number of unexcused no-shows. The administrator should review the participant's account before deactivating it, in case there are extenuating circumstances Set this value to 0 to disable the feature. If set to any value above 0, the administrator will be emailed as soon as a participant accumulates or exceeds the specified unexcused no-show value. See No-Show Handling for more information. Administrator Account Yes or No value indicating if the system should email Notification Email the administrator every time a new account is requested (by a participant). If set to Yes, an email will be sent. Many schools choose to disable this feature when the term is starting, as the administrator is frequently logging onto the site and checking for new accounts. As the term progresses, they enable this feature so they are aware of any account requests, as they trickle in mid-term. This feature only applies if Participant Account Self-Creation is enabled. Administrator Pending A choice indicating if the system should send a Timeslots Email notification email if there are pending timeslots in the system more than 2 days old that have not been dealt with. You may choose to have this sent for al studies, or only non-online studies. The reason not to enable this notification for online studies is that online study notifications are considered eligible (for a notification to be sent) as soon as the sign-up has occurred, since it is difficult to determine when the sign-up occurred while figured the two-day threshold. This email is sent once per day, and only if there are timeslots that meet the criteria. Automatic Account Approval Yes or No value indicating if participant account requests should be approved immediately, without administrator intervention. This feature only applies if Participant Account Self-Creation is enabled. To receive notification of these automatic approvals, enable the Administrator Account Notification Email setting. Automatic Credit Granting Numeric value indicating whether the system should automatically grant credit to a participant if the timeslot is more than X hours old, and the researcher has taken no action. The value for X indicates the number of hours old a timeslot must be before it qualifies for an automatic credit grant. For example, if this was set to 5, then only timeslots more than 5 hours old qualify for 165 the automatic credit grant. The automatic credit grant occurs once a day, usually overnight. The automatic credit grant also takes place for studies that are for-pay, and it also grants credit for online studies, once the participation deadline has passed. Researchers can always override an automatic credit grant later, if necessary. Set this value to 0 to disable the feature. Automatic Credit Grant Yes or No value indicating if the administrator should Administrator Email receive an email with information about all studies where automatic credit grants occurred. This is useful to keep track of situations where researchers are not granting credits in a timely manner. Only applies if Automatic Credit Granting is enabled. Lost Password Feature Yes or No value indicating if the Lost Password feature should be enabled. If enabled (set to Yes), users may have their password emailed to them through a link on the front page of the site, if they forget their password. Typically, the only reason to disable this feature is if there is a concern about sending passwords over email. Change Password Feature Yes or No value indicating whether participants are allowed to change their password after their account is initially created. Generally this should be set to Yes, but some organizations set it to No if they have created participant accounts using a specialized password scheme. Change Password Yes or No value indicating whether participants are Requirement required to change their password after their first login. See the Passwords section of the Security Considerations section of this documentation for more information. Only applies if Change Password Feature is enabled. Administrator Password Yes or No value indicating whether the administrator Retrieval can view the existing passwords of users. If set to No, the administrator can only set a new password for a user, but not view their current password. Study Approval An option indicating if the administrator must approve a study before it is made visible to participants. This can be turned off entirely, enabled only when a study is added, enabled when a study is added or updated, or enabled when a study is added with an email to the administrator upon an update. Approval is controlled by the "Approved" field in a study, not the Active/Inactive setting for a study (which researchers control). Note that if approval is only required when adding a 166 study, it is possible for a researcher to add a study, then go in and update it to make it visible to participants. If this is a concern, you should either enable email notification on the update, or enable approval for updates also. A study is considered "updated" if the descriptive text fields (name, descriptions) is updated. More specifically, a study will require re-approval by the administrator if this setting is set so that a study requires re-approval when the study is updated, and at least one of the following fields about a study are changed: study name, brief abstract, detailed description, eligibility requirements (the text field, not specific restrictions like prescreen restrictions, study pre-requisites/disqualifiers, or course restrictions), duration, preparation, credit value (for credit studies only). If the setting is set so that on an update, the administrator merely receives a notification but no re- approval is needed when a study is updated, then in addition to the fields mentioned above, an email will also be sent when a study that was not previously visible to participants (approved) is made visible. The email notification to the administrator (if enabled), will detail the changes made to the relevant fields. This email notification will not be sent to the Study Approval Contact, even if one is specified. Study Approval Contact If studies require approval by an administrator before being approved so it is visible to participants (see Study Approval setting), then you may specify the email address of where these approval requests should be sent. In some cases, the main administrator for the site is different from the person responsible for approving studies, which is why this may be useful. If this is the same person, leave this blank and the email will go to the administrator. If an email address is specified here, be sure the email address is that of someone who has administrator access to the system so they can actually approve the studies. Only an email address should be entered, and not any additional text like a name. Researcher Manual Sign- An option indicating if researchers can sign up and/or Up/Cancellation cancel a participant for their study. The sign-up option 167 is useful if researchers have a need to override a study's restrictions (pre-requisites or sign-up deadlines, for example), which participants cannot do. The option can be turned off, set to Sign-Ups only, Sign-Ups and Cancellation, or Sign-Ups and Cancellation with an email notification to the administrator when there is a cancellation. Even if the feature is disabled, the administrator can still perform the function if necessary. During a cancellation, the participant always receives an email notification, along with a confirmation code, to help in settling any disputes that may arise. The manual sign-up feature for a study is not available to researchers if a study has not been approved and it requires approval by the administrator (Study Approval setting). This is to ensure that no sign-ups can occur prior to a study receiving approval. Researcher Reminder Email Yes or No value indicating the default value when a new researcher account is created. If set to Yes, researchers will receive an email the day before they have studies scheduled, as a reminder. They will also be sent an email if they have any timeslots more than 2 days old that haven't been dealt with. Regardless of this setting, researchers may override the default setting individually, if they so desire, by going to their profile. Participant Display Order The order that participants are displayed when researchers view a list of who has signed up for their study. Names can be ordered by first (given) name or last name (surname). If Anonymous ID codes are enabled, then researchers will not see names, in which case this setting would only apply to the administrator, since the administrator can always see participant names. In this situation, researchers will see the list of participants sorted by anonymous ID code. Phone Number Display Yes or No value indicating if researchers and principal investigators can view the phone numbers of participants who have signed up for their study. If set to Yes, the phone number is displayed, if it is available. Participant Identification Determines how participants are identified to researchers. The options are by Full Name, by First Name only, or by a unique, system-assigned ID code. The last option ensures the highest level of privacy. The First Name only option is useful so researchers can identify and address participants, while still affording participants some level of privacy. See Participant 168 Unique ID Codes for more information. Prescreen Viewing Yes or No value indicating if researchers can view the results of an individual participant's prescreen, if that participant has signed up for the researcher's study. This setting only applies if online prescreening is enabled (see Online Prescreens). If set to No, researchers cannot view any individual participant prescreen results (though they can view aggregate results across all participants). Prescreen Aggregate Viewing Yes or No value indicating whether researchers can view and analyze prescreen responses for a chosen question across all participants. If enabled, researchers can also download the response data for the chosen question. Participant names are not included in this data, but responses may contain identifying information. This setting only applies if online prescreening is enabled. Prescreen Contact Yes or No value indicating if researchers can contact a group of participants who meet a certain criteria, to invite them to participate any of their studies. The email contact is made through the system in such a manner that the participant's identity is not revealed to the researcher. Some schools are required to disable such a feature, as their IRB considers it coercion. This setting only applies if online prescreening is enabled. Prescreen Contact Limit A numeric value between 1 and 999 indicating the maximum number of participants a researcher may contact at one time, based on running a prescreen analysis and contacting those who meet their specified criteria. For more information, see Invite Qualified Participants in the Researcher section of the documentation. Prescreen Contact Admin CC. Yes or No value indicating if the administrator should receive a copy (by email) of any communications sent to participants by researchers, using the Prescreen Contact feature. If set to Yes, an email will be sent to the administrator with the contact of the communication, which is useful if the administrator would like to monitor the content of such communications (generally to be sure there is no coercion). The email will also contain some basic summary information about which emailing options were chosen and how many participants received the email. Only applies if the Online Prescreening and Prescreen Contact settings are enabled. Prescreen/Survey Concurrent A number between 1 and 10 to indicate the maximum 169 Participant Limit number of participants who can be taking the prescreen or any online survey studies at the same time. The limit is arrived at by adding up all participants taking the prescreen or any online survey studies (combined). The reason to set a low limit is for improved system performance, as too many participants may slow the system down. Those who attempt to participate after the limit is reached will be told they are temporarily prevented from participating, along with an estimate in minutes of how soon there is likely to be more space available. If the prescreen or most online surveys take a while (more than 5 minutes) complete, it is a good idea to set this limit to a low number. A list of who is currently participating is in the System Summary Report. Course Credit Reassignment Yes or No value indicating if participants can reassign a credit from one course to another. This only applies if Course Credit Assignment is enabled, and a participant belongs to multiple courses. Course Reassignment Controls whether participants can change which courses they are in, after their account is initially created. The three options are: • No – They cannot change which courses they are in (however, the administrator may do this for them if necessary). • Yes, Add and Remove Courses – Participants can remove themselves from their current courses, as well as add themselves to other courses. • Yes, Add New Courses Only – Participants can add themselves to other courses, but may not remove themselves from any courses they are currently in. If this setting is enabled, then a participant may change which courses they are in if any one of the following is true: • No-show penalties are turned off (see No-Show Penalty Credits setting) • The system is configured to assess no-show penalties, but those penalties are deducted from earned credits (see Penalty Type setting) • The system is configured to assess no-show credits, and penalties are added to credit requirements, but the participant has not received any no-shows yet 170 It is important to note that if a participant removes themselves from a course, and there are credits assigned to that course, then those credits will become unassigned (they will be advised about this with a warning message). Unassigned credits can be reassigned by the participant to any course they are currently in. Change Log Level This feature is not yet implemented, and can be set to any numeric value (0 is recommended). SMTP Relay Server Address The hostname or IP address of your SMTP relay server. If you run the software on your own servers, your network administrator will have this information. It must be an "open" relay server. If Sona Systems runs your software, this is already taken care of and should not be changed. Current Time Set this value to reflect the current time at your organization. This is just a time zone adjustment. If Sona Systems runs your software, the time will adjust automatically during the Daylight Savings Time switch for the USA. If you are in an area that follows different Daylight Savings Time rules, please check this value on the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November, and adjust it accordingly. Date Format The format in which the system will display dates and times. Choose from either North American (July 14, 2001, 1:30 PM) or European (14 July 2001, 13:30) formats. Compensation Type Text to indicate the unit used when studies are offered for monetary compensation. Usually this is the name of your local currency (Dollars, Pounds, etc.). Even if you do not currently offer studies for compensation, you should specify some value here. Credit Type Text to indicate the unit used when studies are offered for non-monetary compensation. Examples include "Credits" and "Points." Even if you do not currently offer studies for credit, you should specify some value here. License Key Your 17-digit license key will be provided by Sona Systems. The expiration date will be listed. If your license key has expired or is invalid, then only Administrators may login to use the system, and all other users will be prevented from logging in. 171 Settings That May Only Be Changed when the System is Empty The table below lists settings that should only be changed when there is no data in the system. It is very important that you do not change these settings while there is data in the system, or you may lose data and the system may not perform as expected. If you absolutely must change a setting, contact Sona Systems technical support first and they will help you make the necessary changes without a loss of data integrity. Setting Name Description @ Suffix The @ suffix (domain) for all usernames. The system can use user IDs that resemble email addresses. Most schools have an email system with unique email addresses, such as "firstname.lastname@example.com" (in this example, the @ suffix value is "yourschool.edu"). The intention here is that user IDs must be unique in the system, so using an organization's unique email user ID convention is the best way of enforcing this uniqueness. User accounts on this system are not connected in any way to the university email system. See the User IDs section for more information on how user IDs are handled. The value you supply should not include the leading "@". If you do not have a common @ suffix (domain) to map it to, you can leave this blank. If you leave it blank, the system will allow users to choose any user ID, but will also require them to provide an email address so they can be contacted by the system when necessary. Prescreen Requirement Are prescreens required of participants before they may login? There are 3 options for this setting. If you do not deal with prescreens, or you would not like the system to deal with prescreens, then set the value to No Prescreen. If you would like the system to administer a prescreen online, you should set this value to one of the two Online Prescreen options. If this setting is enabled but there is no active prescreen in the system, participants will be allowed to login. On subsequent logins, if a prescreen is now active and available, they will be sent to the online prescreen. See Online Prescreens for more information. Credit/Pay Support This setting determines if support for pay and/or credit studies should be disabled in the system. 172 Note that this setting is mostly cosmetic, and does not change the majority of system functionality. It only changes some text and pages for participants and researchers. If pay support is turned off, then researchers cannot add studies where there is monetary compensation. If credit support is turned off, then researchers cannot add studies for credit. In addition, on pages where participants go to view their credit earning status, no reference to credit is made. Finally, on emails to participants confirmation participation or sign-up for a study, no reference is made in the email text to credits. P.I. Support Yes or No value indicating whether the P.I. (Principal Investigator) feature should be enabled. If enabled (set to Yes), you may create P.I. users, and a P.I. is required for every study. See Principal Investigator Accounts for more information. Multiple Researcher Support Yes or No value indicating if a study can have multiple researchers linked to it. If set to Yes, a study can have multiple researchers. Each researcher (for the study) has full and equal control over the study. If enabled, then Timeslot Usage Restrictions can be enabled only on a per-study (not per-researcher) basis. Strict IRB Mode Yes or No value indicating if the system should operate in strict IRB mode. If set to Yes, the system will operate in strict IRB mode, which requires that each study have an IRB approval code and expiration date, along with some other restrictions. See the Strict IRB Mode section of this documentation for more information. Location Scheduling Yes or No value indicating if the system should make the location (room/lab) scheduling feature available. If set to Yes, the feature is enabled and allows researchers to pull up a list of pre-defined locations and view the availability of those locations when scheduling timeslots. See the Location Scheduling section of this documentation for more information. Credit Increment The acceptable credit increment for studies. Values of 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, or 4 are valid. The study's credit value must be set to a value evenly divisible by the credit increment. For example, if the increment is set to 0.5, then a study may have a credit value of 0.5, 1.0, or 1.5, but may not have a value of 1.25. 173 This increment is also used for purposes of variable credit granting (see the Variable Credit Grant setting). If Variable Credit Grant is set to Yes, then the options available when granting a credit (in the pulldown box) will range from 0 – 2x the study's credit value, in increments based on the Credit Increment. It is advisable to use as large a credit increment as possible (e.g. 0.5 instead of 0.1) as this will result in a slight performance increase for users. Maximum Total Credits This indicates the maximum total number of credits a participant may complete, and this includes any credits earned with online studies. The three possible settings here are: • Required Amount. A participant can complete only as many credits as their own credit requirements. You may view their credit requirements by looking at their Credits Needed value when viewing their record. • A fixed credit amount. You may specify a specific credit maximum, and this value can be a fractional number up to two decimal points (e.g. 1.25 or 2.5). Note that if a participant has credit requirements larger than this value, they will be allowed to exceed the value specified here up to their credit requirements. The reason is that it would be unfair to prevent a participant from meeting their credit requirements. • No Limit. When a participant goes to sign up for a study, the system factors in the effect of that study's credit value on the maximum credit limit. Maximum Online Credits This indicates the maximum credits a participant may complete with online studies, which includes both online external web studies and online survey studies. In some cases, it may be useful to limit participation in online studies, to ensure participants also receive experience participating in studies where their physical presence is required. The four possible settings are: • Not allowed to participate in online studies. It may be easier just to turn off online studies in the system instead of using this setting. • A fixed credit amount. You may specify a specific credit maximum, and this value can be a fractional number up to two decimal points 174 (e.g. 1.25 or 2.5). • A percentage of a participant's credit requirements. This is useful when participants have a wide range of requirements. • No Limit. Maximum Credit Yes or No value indicating if the system should be Enforcement Leniency lenient when it enforces the maximum credit restrictions (both Maximum Total Credits and Maximum Online Credits). If set to Yes, the system will be lenient and allow a participant to exceed the maximum credit in sign-ups as long as they do not exceed it in granted credits. This situation may occur when a researcher has yet to credit a participant for a study a participant participated in, or a participant has signed up for more than one upcoming study (thus there are multiple credits they have yet to earn, but likely will earn in the future). No-Show Penalty Credits A numeric value indicating the number of penalty credits to assess when a participant does not show up for a study. If a researcher indicates a participant did not appear for a study (unexcused no-show), the participant will not receive credit for the study and the number of credits they must complete will be increased by this No-Show Penalty Credits value. You may set this to No Penalty, a fixed penalty amount, or a penalty amount that is a multiple value of the number of credits the missed study is worth. This value can be a fractional number with up to two decimal points of accuracy (e.g. 1.25 or 2.5) if it is set to a fixed penalty value. If set to a fixed penalty value, then no-shows will always be penalized the same amount. If set to a multiple value amount, it must be a whole number (1, 2, etc.), and the penalty is determined by multiplying this value by the study's credit value. For instance, if the multiple value is set to 2, and a participant earned a no-show on a 2.5 credit study, they would be assessed a 5 credit penalty (2.5 x 2). Assessing penalties for no-shows may not be allowed in many situations. See the No-Show Penalties section (in Regulatory Compliance) for further information. Penalty Type Indicates how penalties (if penalties are implemented in the system – see the No-Show Penalty Credits setting) are implemented. There are 2 options for this: penalties increase credit requirements and penalties are deducted 175 from earnings. The penalties increase credit requirements option adds onto a participant's overall credit requirements when they earn a penalty. This option is useful especially when there is objection by an IRB to the other option, which effectively results in a deduction of earned credits. One potential drawback to this option is if the maximum credit earning potential should be limited (with the Maximum Credits system setting). The system will allow a participant to exceed the Maximum Credits setting if their own credit requirements are greater than the Maximum Credits value. So, if a participant earns a lot of penalties, it may result in a credit requirements value higher than the Maximum Credits value. If there is a reason for the Maximum Credits value to be so strict (generally to limit earning potential), then this penalty type option may not be ideal. The other penalty type will deduct from a participant's credit earnings. This may result in a negative earnings value. With either option, when a penalty is assessed, no credit is granted. The two penalty type options merely determine how the penalty is applied. This setting cannot be changed if there are any penalties in the system, other than those that were retained using participation history retention (see End- of-Semester Maintenance), as retained penalties have no penalty value. The reason this setting cannot be changed if there are outstanding penalties is that it would be impossible to determine which penalties were assessed under which penalty type, which is necessary information in the event a penalty is revoked. Study Descriptions This setting concerns the Brief Abstract and Detailed Description fields for a study, but does not affect the study's name (which must always be provided). These two fields can be made optional, mandatory, or turned off entirely. It may be useful to turn off these descriptions entirely when it is not desirable for researchers to enter detailed information about their study (perhaps the description 176 is coercive). Duplicate Study Sign-Up Yes or No value indicating whether researchers can configure their studies such that participants can sign up for the study more than once (at different times. If set to Yes, researchers have the option of configuring it to allow duplicate sign-ups (but they may opt not to allow it). If set to No, researchers are never given such an option, and duplicate sign-ups are prohibited. Passworded Studies Yes or No value indicating whether researchers may setup studies that require a special password (for the study itself) that a participant must know before they can sign up. This is known as an invitation code. If set to Yes, researchers have the option of setting an invitation code for each of their studies (they may opt not to use this feature). If set to No, researchers are never given such an option, and passworded studies are not allowed. Web Studies Web study support may be turned off entirely, enabled for external studies only (web studies that are administered outside the system), or enabled for both external studies and online surveys administered by the system. Pre-Requisite Feature Yes or No value indicating whether studies may have pre-requisites and/or disqualifiers (a disqualifier is a study a participant must not have participated in in order to participate in a study). If set to Yes, researchers may choose as many pre-requisites and/or disqualifiers for their studies as they like (they may opt not to). If set to No, researchers are never given such an option, and pre-requisites and disqualifiers are not allowed. Pre-Requisite Enforcement Yes or No value indicating whether the system should Leniency be lenient in enforcing pre-requisites. If set to Yes, a participant may sign up for a study that has a pre- requisite, as long as they are signed up for the pre- requisite study also. If set to No, the system will be strict and a participant must have received credit for the pre-requisite study before they may sign up. An example where leniency might be useful is if on a Monday, a participant signs up for Study A for Wednesday, and they want to sign up for Study B for Friday. Study B has a pre-requisite of Study A. If this value is set to Yes, the participant is allowed to sign up for Study B because they are signed up for Study A. If the value is set to No, they cannot sign up for Study B 177 until they have received credit for Study A (which will likely occur after they participate in Study A, on Wednesday). Course Restriction Feature Yes or No value indicating if the course restriction feature should be made available. If set to Yes, researchers can choose to limit participation in their studies to participants enrolled in specified courses. If a participant is not enrolled any of the specified courses, the study will not show up on the list of available studies. Such restrictions are particularly useful when the participants span a wide range of courses, and certain studies should be off-limits to participants who may have learned about the details of a certain type of research in their courses, such that their participation may affect the integrity of the research. Timeslot Usage Restriction This setting may be enabled so the system enforces restrictions on the number of experimental timeslot hours available. It can be restricted on a per-researcher basis (a researcher has a specified number of hours to allocate across all their studies), per-P.I. basis, or per- study basis (restrictions are linked to a specific study). Only one type of restriction may be chosen (system- wide). If Multiple Researchers per Study is enabled, then the per-researcher basis for restriction is not available. This feature may also be disabled entirely. The per-P.I. option may only be selected if P.I. support is enabled in the system. See the Timeslot Usage Limit section of this documentation for more information. Timeslot Usage Restriction A number indicating the default value for the Default maximum number of hours available for timeslots. This only applies if Timeslot Usage Restriction is enabled. This value is only used as the default value, and it may be overridden for an individual study/researcher/P.I., depending on which type of restrictions are in place. The value specified here is in hours, and must be a whole number (e.g. 10, 25, 37). Multiple Course Support Yes or No value indicating whether participants may belong to multiple courses. If set to Yes, participants may belong to multiple courses. If set to No, they may only belong to one course. Course Credit Assignment Yes or No value indicating whether participants can assign a study credit to a specific course. This is useful when the participant is in more than one course. If set to No, course credits are assigned directly to the participant and not associated with any course. This only applies when the Multiple Course Support value is 178 set to Yes. Multiple Course If a participant belongs to more than one course Requirements (Multiple Course Support must be enabled), this setting determines what their credit requirements should be. Credits requirements are tied to individual courses. There are 3 options for how the system should compute their credit requirements: 1. The sum (total) value of credits for all the courses they are in. 2. The value of the lowest credit-value course they are in. 3. The value of the highest credit-value course they are in. This computation is made only when the participant record is created. If their course assignments change later, the requirements may need to be adjusted. Participant Account Self- Yes or No value indicating whether participants may Creation create their own accounts. See the Participant Account Self-Creation section for more information. If set to Yes, participants will see an option on the front page of the site where they may create their own accounts. If set to No, no such link or option will be available. Student ID Deactivation Yes or No value whether the Student (University) ID number should be disable from the system entirely. This only applies to participant (student) accounts. Often, this is disabled if such numbers map to a participant's SSN, and regulations (such as FERPA) prevent collection of such data. Student ID Requirement Yes or No value indicating whether participants must supply their Student (University) ID number when creating an account. This only applies if Participant Account Self-Creation is enabled, and Student ID Deactivation is set to No. If the Student ID Requirement setting is set to No, participants may still supply their Student (University) ID number, but they are not required to do so. Student ID Duplicates Yes or No value indicating if the system will allow participants to create an account where the Student (University) ID is already in use by another participant in the system. If set to Yes, then duplicates are allowed. This setting only applies if Participant Account Self- Creation is set to Yes, and Student ID Deactivation is set to No. Participant Phone Number Yes or No value indicating if participants must also Requirement provide their phone number when registering with the 179 system. Participant Account Alt. Yes or No value indicating if participants can specify Email an alternate email address where they would like to receive email notifications from the system. If set to Yes, participants are allowed to specify an alternate email address. This setting does not apply if there is no @ Suffix configured in the system (see System Settings). No-Show Handling The system has support for assessing a penalty when an unexcused no-show is accrued. See the settings No-Show Penalty Credits and Penalty Type in System Settings. In many situations, assessing penalties for failure to show up for a study may not be allowed. See the No-Show Penalties section (in Regulatory Compliance) for more information about in which situations this may apply. Instead of (or in addition to) assessing penalties for no-shows, the system offers some other features for dealing with participants who accrue excessive no-shows. All these features are in full compliance with the determination letter from OHRP (see No-Show Penalties). The first option is the Administrator No-Show Notification Email setting (see System Settings). With this, the administrator can be notified once a participant has accrued a specified number of unexcused no-shows. At that point, the administrator can either block the participant's access to the system entirely (set Login to System Allowed? to No), or restrict their account so that they may only sign up for studies marked as research alternative studies (set Limited to Research Alternative Studies? to Yes). Another option, similar to the previous option, provides a more automated method of dealing with things. The No-Show Account Limit (see System Settings) may be configured so that a participant's account is automatically limited to only research alternative studies after a specific number of unexcused no-shows are accrued. The system will also reverse this limitation if an unexcused no-show is later reversed. To make this limitation handled automatically by the system, ensure that the Limited to Research Alternative Studies? setting for a participant is set to Automatic (this is the default). A final option is if instructors want to give some type of bonus credit for participants who do not accrue any unexcused no-shows. To facilitate this, there is an Unexcused No- Shows column on the Credit Completion report. Instructors may use this information at their discretion. There is no direct feature in the system to grant any type of bonus credit through the system for not accruing no-shows, and the reason is that the credit grant would get extremely complicated when participants are in multiple courses, and also if they accrue an unexcused no-show after the bonus is granted. 180 There are methods of making participants aware of the no-show policies, by including text in emails when they receive an unexcused no-show or their account is automatically limited. See Updating System Text for further information. It is often useful to clear out unexcused no-shows from participants before the start of a new term, so they may start with a clean slate. See End-of-Semester Maintenance for options to delete unexcused no-shows, or convert them to excused no-shows. Security Considerations Security is typically a balance where the need to for information to be secure is balanced against convenience for users. Security needs typically also vary based on what data is being stored in the system, and what type of research is being done. In general, data in the system is not considered at high-risk in terms of its attractiveness to being sought out or stolen. Most criminals are looking for data which can produce an easy financial gain (and where there exists a market to sell such data), and most often this is financial information like credit card numbers. Data stored in the system, like information about who signed up for which study, does not have much commercial value on the open market. Even research data, like data collected as part of an online survey study, is likely to have limited value to others. To date, we have seen no malicious attempts to hack into our software, and we have had no reported cases of data being compromised. Regardless, confidentiality of data is always important to maintain trust and ensure that users receive the level of privacy they expect. For that reason, it's best to consult with your IT department or IRB to determine security needs. The following sections outline some areas of concern. Passwords In order to make it possible to send user passwords by email, passwords are stored in the database in non-encrypted format (just like all other data in the system). While some software products use a password reset method involving tokens (that does not have a requirement of storing the password in plaintext), this is not appropriate for our software because not all password retrievals are user-initiated (thus there could be undesirable password resets). Generally, the biggest concern with sending passwords over email is if the password is used on other websites, like a user's online bank or email. Since email is not considered secure, there is a slim chance the email could be intercepted and this information used to login to such sites. In our software, on all pages where users are given the opportunity to change their passwords, there is text reminding them to choose a password that is not used on other sites, as the password may be sent by email. Using different passwords for different websites is considered good computing practice. When participants request an account (if Participant Account Self-Creation is Enabled) in System Settings, they are not 181 allowed to choose a password at that time. Instead, the system assigns a random password consisting of a string of letters and numbers. If there is a concern that users may ignore warnings about choosing a unique password, it is possible to turn off the feature where they can change their password, in which case they are stuck with the system-assigned password (that is very secure, but not the easiest to remember) or the password assigned by the administrator if the account was created by the administrator and a specific password was chosen. To prevent users from changing their password, set Change Password Feature to No in System Settings. It's also possible to control if the administrator can see users' passwords. Some administrators like to have access to user passwords as this makes it easy to troubleshoot problems the user may be having. This can be turned off by setting Administrator Password Retrieval to No in System Settings. The only place a user can choose to have their password emailed to them is using the lost password feature on the front page of the site. This feature can be turned off by setting Lost Password Feature to No in System Settings. The administrator can choose to have passwords emailed to a user without the user requesting it. This can be done when editing a user records (Users | Add/Edit/Search), when creating an account (either individually or via batch import), and when using the Mass Email feature. You may also force all participants to change their password upon their first login. This is useful particularly if their accounts were set up through a batch import, and the passwords were generated using some scheme (perhaps a variant of their student number) or some other default password, in place of using the system-generated random password feature. To enable this feature, set Change Password Requirement and Change Password Feature to Yes in System Settings. For purposes of logging in, passwords are not case-sensitive (to reduce the number of support emails sent to the administrator with login problems), though the passwords are stored in the database in case-sensitive format. Data Transmission In most system configurations, the information sent between the system and the user is not encrypted. To determine if your site is using encrypted transmission, go to the site and once there, look at your browser's address bar. If the address starts with "http://" then no encryption is in place. If the address starts with "https://" (note the "s") then encryption is in place. If you would like to add encryption to your site, please contact technical support. There is an annual surcharge for this service to cover our costs to the third-party vendor that provides the technology that makes this possible. 182 Fewer than 5% of our customers are currently using encryption, and encryption is not required under HIPAA Security guidelines. System Limits Data Limits The system doesn't have any hard limits concerning data storage, but the system performs better when there is less data in the system. The biggest affect on performance is the amount of prescreen and online survey responses stored in the system. This can be monitored on the System Summary Report, and we recommend keeping the total across all surveys and the prescreen to under 400,000 responses. This limit can vary based on the types of responses collected, with the recommended limit being lower if many responses are for free-form text answers (as opposed to multiple-choice questions), as those responses typically contain more text and thus take up more space. See Viewing Survey Data Usage and Deleting Survey Data for more information. After using the system for a few years, if study and participant information is retained, the data may get a bit unwieldy. On top of that, some data may not be really necessary to preserve after a few years, as the researchers or participants involved have long since graduated. End-of-Semester Maintenance provides many options for deleting information based on last login dates, which is a good way to clear out just old data. Batch Study Deletion is also a good way of reviewing older studies and deleting them selectively (see Batch Study Deletion for more information). Batch Study Deletion works best after End- of-Semester Maintenance has been completed, as that maintenance often results in changes that make more studies eligible for deletion. Foreign Language Support Our product does not officially support languages other than English, and the interface functions only in English. However, a number of customers do enter data in other languages. Some pages provide the ability to add additional text, and additional instructions in a foreign language can be added here (see Updating System Text for more information). Generally, the system works quite well with Western European languages, as those use a single-byte character set and are displayed from left to right. One area to examine is text that ends up as part of a system-generated email. The main items to check are the Site Name value in System Settings, as this is used in the email From or Subject line. Because of certain technical restrictions in how emails are passed between email servers, the From or Subject lines may become slightly garbled in places where a character has some type of accent on it ("é" for example). Generally, modern-day email servers are fairly good at handling this now, but the problem may occur. With languages where a double-byte character set (Unicode) is necessary, like Hebrew, there may be some issues. One known issue is the system does not correctly compute the 183 length of such characters when looking at field length limits. As an example, the name of a study is typically limited to 100 characters. However, the system cannot correctly check this length when double-byte characters are involved, and it may not correctly limit the length but instead give the user an error. The general rule to use is that if a field is limited to X characters, then this is equivalent to X/7 (one seventh) the amount in double-byte characters. The reason the limit is X/7 and not X/2 (as might be expected since it's only a double-byte character) is that web browsers send the character information in HTML format, which converts double-byte characters into a more complex single-byte representation. Another issue with double-byte characters arises when downloading the data, especially online survey or prescreen data. The download as CSV format may not display correctly, however the on-screen format should display properly. In summary, when doing something not in English in the system, be sure to test it carefully and thoroughly to make sure it will work as expected. This goes especially for prescreen and online survey data, as it would be a shame to collect a lot of data and then find out it's not possible to see it. Accessibility Information In general, the system should be usable for all users without hindrance. The system works correctly with screen-reading devices, and all non-decorative images are properly labeled. In addition, for participants, all text entry fields are linked to their descriptive text with use of <label> tags. The system is predominantly text-based, and makes no use of any special graphics, layering technologies, or dynamic HTML that can make use of the system difficult for those with assistive devices. Because of the complexity of the interface that the administrator sees, there may be cases where non-decorative images are not properly labeled. This only affects the administrator, and not any other type of user. If this is an issue, please contact Technical Support and we will be happy to work on dealing with any issues in a timely manner. Regulatory Compliance Introduction This software complies with all major regulations governing human subject research and privacy of data stored online. The system complies with both HIPAA and Common Rule for customers in the United States, when configured as such. For customers in Canada, it complies with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act as well as the Tri-Council Statement. For customers in the European Union or in countries that follow OECD rules, it complies with OECD privacy rules and the European Union Directive of Data Protection. If you are in the United States, there is the option in System Settings to configure the system with Common Rule compliance only, or HIPAA and Common Rule compliance. Your IRB can advise about compliance issues for the system. The only difference is in 184 the content of the human subjects/privacy policy statement that is linked from the bottom of every page on the site, once a user is logged in. If you would like to test this, set up a participant account, login as that participant, and view the statement. You can then change the setting in System Settings and view the other statement. The HIPAA statement contains references (as required under HIPAA) to medical information, so if this can be off-putting to participants and HIPAA compliance is not required, then it may be better to choose the Common Rule option only. In most cases, your organization must comply with all human subject and privacy rules that apply in your country. You should consult with your organization's IRB for more information. Even if you are not required to comply, compliance is still a good idea, as protecting sensitive data is always a good thing. Compliance in the context of this system is as simple as reading the remaining paragraphs of this section (that apply to your organization) and following the guidelines contained therein. The remaining compliance issues involving software, privacy and electronic data storage are all handled automatically by the software. You should still consult with your IRB or organization to learn more about additional compliance rules you must follow outside of use of this software (the handling of demographic prescreens administered on paper would be one example). Some regulations (particularly the US HIPAA regulations) are focused primarily on health data. You may think the system does not store confidential health data (in HIPAA terms, it is called PHI -- Protected Health Information), but depending on how your organization uses the software, there may very well be confidential data in the system. Consider the case of a study that requires that a participant come from a family that has a history of mental illness. Merely knowing who signed up for that study is confidential because that type of information should not be revealed to the public. It may turn out that your organization does not engage in studies of such a nature, but even more benign situations, like a study that requires that participants be regular contact lens wearers, can be construed as confidential information. Organizations typically err on the side of caution given the criminal and civil penalties for violation of these types of regulations. You should also give some though to the Unique ID Code feature (see Participant Unique ID Codes). In many cases, you must enable this feature to properly protect a participant's privacy. No-Show Penalties In January 2010, the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP), which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), issued a determination letter regarding assessing penalties when a participant does not show up for a study. You may read more here: http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/policy/correspond/OHRP20100108.html You should consult with your IRB for advice, but generally this applies to research funding by the U.S. Government, and to universities with a Federal-Wide Assurance (FWA) in place. Even if your university is located outside the U.S., the determination may still apply if researchers receive U.S. Government money for their research. In 185 addition, it would not be surprising if similar regulatory bodies in other countries follow the lead of OHRP on this issue. To ensure compliance with the determination, simply set No-Show Penalty Credits to No Penalty in System Settings. In the determination letter, OHRP proposed some alternative to issuing penalties, like restricting study opportunities, and offering a bonus point for not accruing any no-shows. Both options are supposed in the system. See No-Show Handling for more information. Handling an Information Request In many cases, a participant has a right to request a copy of all data stored about them by the system, and this request should be granted in a timely manner, free of charge. If you receive such a request, first verify the identity of the requester. After this is done, go to Users | Add/Edit/Search, and print a copy of their record. This will contain all their signup data and other login data. If your system has online prescreens enabled and they have participated in the prescreen, you should also print a copy of their prescreen results (a link is included on their user information page). After following these steps, you have complied with the regulations. Data Handling and Security Guidelines As an Administrator, you have access to every study and you can see who has signed up for those studies, as well as online prescreen responses. Because of these privileges, you should follow these simple guidelines: • Secure Your Account. Use a password that is difficult to guess. The most secure passwords contain a combination of letters and numbers, do not spell a real word, and are at least 8 characters long. • Secure Your Work Area. If you are logged into the system and you leave your computer, you should logout of the system or use a password lock on your computer. Ask your network administrator for help with setting up a password lock. • Handle Paper Documents Carefully. Any printouts from the system should be kept reasonably secure. Store them in desk drawer out of the public view. Documents you decide to discard should be shredded if possible. • Secure Electronic Data Carefully. Data exported from the system (using the Data Export feature) should be securely stored. Ask your network administrator for assistance with properly securing this data. Strict IRB Mode The system can run in strict IRB mode, if configured as such in System Settings. In this mode, a study must have an IRB approval code and expiration date in order to be posted. The system does not check the format of the IRB approval code (since those may vary 186 widely), but merely that some text is provided. So if the study is one that does not require IRB approval, it's acceptable to enter any text in this area. The system will prevent any timeslots from being added which are to take place after the IRB expiration date. In addition, the study will be deactivated (participants will not be able to see it) on the expiration date. Only the administrator may extend the expiration date. Human Subjects/Privacy Policy Acknowledgment Researchers and Principal Investigators must acknowledge the Human Subjects and Privacy Policy (all on one page) once every 6 months, if the Researcher Human Subject Policy Acknowledgment setting is enabled (see System Settings). Participants must also acknowledge the policy once every 6 months, if the Participant Human Subject Policy Acknowledgment setting is enabled (see System Settings). When a user is shown the policy for acknowledgment, they will see standard, regulation- compliant wording that is included with the software. If you would like to supplement this with your organization's own policy, you provide that policy through the Human Subject Policy URL setting (see System Settings). The standard policy varies depending on the type of user that is viewing it, and is available for review at any time through a link labeled "Human Subjects Policy" at the bottom of every page (for users who are logged in). If anonymous identification (see Participant Identification in System Settings) is enabled, participants will also see their numeric ID code on this page, and be notified that researchers know them only by this code. 187
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