As an alternative to Survey Access Codes, users can get a respondent navigated to a survey page quickly by using a QR code. If the respondent is physically nearby and has a QR code scanner app on their device, they can quickly scan the QR code for any survey link, which will immediately open the survey webpage on their device.
The QR code option is found alongside the Survey Access Code option on the Public Survey Link page, on the Participant List, and other places. If the user or respondent is familiar with using QR codes, QR codes make it very easy to quickly get to a survey page on another device.
New feature: Survey Login
Survey administrators can now provide improved security their surveys with a survey login form, in which respondents will be required to enter some login credentials in order to begin a survey or (if the "Save & Return Later" feature is enabled) to return to a previously entered survey response.
To enable the Survey Login feature, there is a new button at the top of the instrument list on the Online Designer that will open up the Survey Login settings popup. Users who wish to enable Survey Login may choose one, two, or three fields in their project to be used as the login credential fields for surveys in their project.
The Survey Login can be enabled for ALL surveys in a project or just selected surveys (in which it can be enabled for each on their Survey Settings page). There are also several other features to allow users to customize the behavior of the Survey Login feature.
Note: If a survey has the "Save & Return Later" feature enabled, Return Codes will not be used to return to the survey, but it will use the Survey Login's login credentials instead.
New feature: Ability for survey respondents to return and modify *completed* responses
In previous versions, once a survey was fully completed, the respondent could not return to make any further edits. (Although users could modify the response on a data entry form if they have appropriate user privileges, but the respondents could not make modifications *on the survey page*.) But now, this new survey option will allow respondents to return after they have fully completed the survey.
This feature can be enabled on the Survey Settings page under the "Save & Return Later" section for a given instrument in the Online Designer. Once enabled, a respondent will be able to return to their response and make any edits to it even if they have fully completed the survey.
As part of the "Save & Return Later" feature, respondents will need to provide a Return Code in order to make edits (as is the case in previous versions when returning to partially completed responses). When the feature is enabled, they will be given their Return Code when they finish the survey, after which they may return to that survey link at any time in the future to make edits to their response. If the Survey Login feature is enabled for the survey, then instead of using a Return Code, they will use their login credentials to return to the survey.
If enabled, participants who have completed the survey will still appear in the Participant List in the Compose Survey Invitations popup to allow them to be invited again to edit their completed response. Additionally, their survey link and survey access code will also remain in the Participant List for this same purpose.
Note: If Survey Notifications have been enabled for a survey that has the "Edit Completed Responses" option enabled, then whenever the respondent returns to the survey again and completes the survey again, it will again trigger the Survey Notifications to send an email to those users selected.
Improvement: New survey option to display or hide the page number displayed at the top of the survey page. This option can be found under the "Question Display Format" section of the Survey Settings page in the Online Designer.
Improvement: More functionality has been added to the REDCap::getData() plugin/hook method. Five additional parameters were added to the method to provide developers with even more flexibility regarding the data that the method outputs. The new parameters are listed below. For full documentation and examples for this method, see the " Plugin & Hook Documentation" pages in your REDCap 6.1.0 installation.
exportDataAccessGroups - Specifies whether or not to return the "redcap_data_access_group" field when data access groups are utilized in the project. By default, FALSE is used.
exportSurveyFields - Specifies whether or not to return the survey identifier field (e.g., "redcap_survey_identifier") or survey timestamp fields (e.g., form_name+"_timestamp") when surveys are utilized in the project. By default, FALSE is used.
filterLogic - Text string of logic to be applied to the data set so that only record-events that evaluate as TRUE for the logic will be output in the returned data set. By default, this parameter is NULL and is thus ignored. This logic string is the same format as used all throughout REDCap in advanced filters for reports, branching logic, Data Quality module, etc. Example: [gender] = "1".
exportAsLabels - Sets the format of the data returned. If FALSE, it returns the raw data. If TRUE, it returns the data as labels (e.g., "Male" instead of "0"). By default, FALSE is used.
exportCsvHeadersAsLabels - Sets the format of the CSV headers returned (only applicable to 'csv' return formats). If FALSE, it returns the variable names as the headers. If TRUE, it returns the fields' Field Label text as the headers. By default, FALSE is used.
BUG FIXES & OTHER CHANGES:
Bug fix: If a date or datetime field is used as a filter in a report and the value of that filter field is left blank/empty, then it would not return the correct results in the report. And if the report were edited, the value of the date/time filter in the report would mistakenly appear as "0000-00-00", which might accidentally get saved when the report is re-saved.
Bug fix: If survey responses are collected using a Public Survey link and the designated email field is enabled but is left blank (thus no email address was entered for the person), then that survey will have an incorrect number of participants listed at the top of its Participant List, in which it is mistakenly including all the responses with no email addresses even though it is not displaying them on the page. This can cause confusion if the user tries to navigate to the last page of the Participant List (if there are many participants), in which the Participant List will show up as empty for those latter pages.
Bug fix: When importing XML-formatted data via the API data import, it would mistakenly truncate any text being imported if the text contained an ampersand (even if the ampersand was properly escaped in the XML). Note: This only occurs when the text is not put inside a CDATA block in the XML.
Bug fix: When creating a new record on a data entry form, the "download PDF" option to download "this data entry form with saved data" would mistakenly be displayed even though the record does not exist yet. And if the user clicked that option, it would result in a completely blank PDF file.
Bug fix: If the HTML character code for non-breaking spaces ( ) is included in the field label, field note, section header, or multiple choice label of a field, then a PDF export of the instrument containing that field will mistakenly display the HTMl character code as-is in the PDF rather than rendering it properly as a space in the PDF.
Change: Email addresses in the Participant List now order correctly as case insensitive natural ordering. In previous versions, they ordered as case sensitive natural ordering.
Bug fix: When using the Randomization module and performing the randomization of a record, if the "Randomize" button in the popup window is clicked rapidly several times, it might allow the request to be sent multiple times, which could cause issues.
Bug fix: If REDCap was in the process of being upgraded to a newer version, in which the new REDCap version directory had been moved to the web server prior to the upgrade SQL script being executed, then users making API requests might have their results returned from the API as a doubled response, where it would return the expected API response concatenated with itself.
Bug fix: When attempting to import data via the API Import Records method, in which one or more of the import fields is a Descriptive field, which cannot have data, it was mistakenly not returning an error message in this instance and would mistakenly add the data to the redcap_data table as orphaned data, although this does not affect anything ultimately. It now returns an error message and halts the import if a Descriptive field is included in the imported data.
Change: The Participant List for initial surveys now displays all responses that have been created - either partial or fully completed - including those initially created via a Public Survey link. In previous versions, those responses that were not created via the Participant List were not displayed for initial surveys, although they would appear in the Participant List of follow-up surveys (i.e., non-initial surveys). Tangential to this, only participants that have *not* begun the initial survey yet will have the "remove" link displayed for them in the Participant List, which means that if a response is either partial or complete, it will not be able to be deleted from the Participant List as it was in previous versions. This is to keep the behavior for initial surveys more consistent with behavior of other surveys in the project. Note: The email address for responses created via a Public Survey link will not to be editable in the Participant List because if there is an email address, it will be originating from the Designated Email Field, which is a data value.
Change: Merged all survey options at top of data entry forms into a single all-purpose drop-down
Change: Survey links generated for public surveys will now have a human-readable hash in the URL to make them more easily typed by hand for respondents. (This applies only to public survey links and not to survey links that are unique to participants.)
