REDCap Tips and Tricks

Options for Customization

Multiple Choice Fields: Copy Existing Choices

When building your forms where you are using the same set of choices for different multiple-choice fields, you can click on the link “Copy Existing Choices” (found above the Choice dialogue box in the “Add New Field” popup). This will ensure consistent coding among questions.

Add several matrices on a single survey page with the survey configured for multiple pages

To accomplish this, you can create a Section Header at the top of the group of matrices, then create the matrices with no matrix header. Leaving out the matrix header will suppress the forcing to a new page in surveys. If each matrix needs a header, you can opt for the Descriptive Field prior to the beginning of each matrix and style it with HTML.

Email Notifier Plugin

The Email Notifier tool can be found in Applications section of all REDCap projects. You can set up a trigger that will generate an email to anyone on the project when a form instrument has been saved. Good for cross team communication for workflow.

Survey Progress Bar

Since REDCap does not provide a progress bar, a fellow REDCap user from Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Australia provided this clever solution:

<div style=”width:100%;border:0;margin:0;padding:0;background-color:#A9BAD1;text-align:center;”>

<div style=”width:33%;border: 0;margin:0;padding:0;background-color:#8491A2″><span style=”color:#8491A2″>.</span>

</div>

</div>

Determine how many surveys you have and then place this at the top of each survey instructions and adjust the “width:33%” part to the appropriate proportion. Also, feel free to change the colors as well.

Allowable HTML tags

Text Formatting

<b>bold</b>

<i>italics<i>

<u>underline</u>

Additional Tags Supported

<p>      <img>       <td>

<a>      <span>      <tr>

<h3>     <div>       <th>

<h2>     <em>        <acronym>

<h1>     <strong>    <table>

Font Sizes

<font size=1>text</font>

<font size=2>text</font>

<font size=3>text</font>

(any # for the font size)

Alignments

<center>center text</center>

Font Colors

<font color=”red”>text</font>

<font color=”blue”>text</font>

<font color=”green”>text</font>

<font color=”yellow”>text</font>

(insert any color to test if it will work)

Indented Text

<div style=”padding-left: 3em”> This is a question with indented text </div>

Example of Use

<div class=”red” style=”text-align:center;”>

<h3 style=”text-align:center;”>Participant is not ACTIVE</h3>

Please review participant status form before continuing.

</div>