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Schedules
Schedules are the engine that make Inclivio run and where you implement your research design. We have designed our schedule-builder to be as flexible as possible to enable you to implement a diverse array of research designs. There is no limit to the number of schedules you can create in your projects, thus allowing you to implement subject-specific schedules and easily automate complex research designs such as measurement burst studies. On this page you will find information about:
Types of Schedules

There are four types of schedules within Inclivio that allow you to achieve different goals:

Ecological Momentary Assessment allow you to send multiple pings per day to your participants based on the parameters you set. Choose this schedule if you plan to send 2+ pings on at least one day in your study.

Longitudinal schedules allow you to implement long-term longitudinal assessments in Inclivio. Longitudinal schedules allow you to go several days without sending pings, whereas this is not possible in ESM/EMA schedules. The primary difference between longitudinal schedules and ESM/EMA schedules is that you can skip days in longitudinal schedules (e.g., send pings 1 day/week).

Dynamic schedules are event-contingent schedules based on time-since-activation rather than time-of-day. Dynamic schedules are useful when you want to assess certain episodes (e.g., drinking episodes, heightened suicidality) that do not occur at a predictable time.

Participant Initiated schedules are event-contingent assessments that the participant self-initiates by clicking on a button on their Inclivio home page. Participant initiated schedules do not incur costs, and pass on relevant meta-data to your survey (e.g., participantid, scheduleid).

Creating a new schedule
  1. Navigate to Projects > {Project Name} > Schedules and select the New Schedule button on the top right of the page.
  2. Select your desired schedule type
  3. Enter a name for the schedule. Only you and your collaborators will see this name. It is advised to choose something meaningful so you can easily identify it within a list of all your project's schedules.
  4. Enter a Survey URL for the schedule. This is the base URL to the survey you want your participants to receive. You can also enter an optional schedule description to help you stay organized. This schedule description is only accessible by you and your collaborators.
  5. Select Create Schedule create the ESM/EMA schedule
Schedule Parameters
Ecological Momentary Assessment
  • Automatic vs. Manual Schedule application
    Do you want to apply this schedule to all participants when they enroll? If yes, toggle this on (). If no, toggle this off (). Manual schedule application is most useful when you have schedules you want to apply only to a subset of participants (e.g., participant-specific schedules, experimental designs with different assessment schedules in each arm).
  • When to start sending pings
    Participants can start receiving pings immediately after they enroll in your study (defaults to the following day). Use this field to control when participants begin receiving pings. This is very useful in implementing measurement burst designs. For example, suppose you want to implement a design wherein you ping participants 5x/day for 14 days, wait 30 days, then ping again 5x/day for 14 days. To automate this within Inclivio, you would create two ESM/EMA schedules, one that begins 1 day after enrollment, the other that begins 45 days (15 + 30) after enrollment.
  • Conditions upon which to stop sending reminders
    Choose whether to send reminders until the participant clicks on their ping (i.e., is routed to the survey) or until they complete their survey. If 'Survey Complete'
  • Survey expiration
    Use this field to control when pings expire. When participants click on an expired ping, they are not redirected to the survey. Instead, they will reach a page informing them that the ping has expired.
  • Buffer between random pings
    If you are using a random interval design (i.e., sending pings randomly within pre-defined intervals of time), you may want to prevent pings from being sent too close together. Use this field to control the minimum amount of time random pings are separated by. If you attempt to create random pings with intervals larger than the value in this field you will receive a warning "Exceeds minimum separation minutes".
  • Schedule Length
    How many days do you want this schedule to run? Use this field to control the length of your schedule.
  • Schedule Mode
    This field gives you control of when your pings are sent.
    • Select Same every day to send the same set of pings every day the schedule is applied.
    • Select By day of the week if you want your pings to differ by day-of-the-week. This is useful, for example, if you want to send a different ping schedule on certain days of the week, or if you want to adjust the ping schedule to match sleep/wake times as they vary across the week.
    • Select By study day for full customization over the ping schedule. Allows you to set a unique ping schedule for every day the schedule is applied.
  • Random sequence
    Numeric value used to implement within-person experimental designs, sent as a survey parameter. If None is selected, this value is left blank. If All Pings is selected, a value between 1 and the total number of pings contained within that schedule will be sampled without replacement. If All Days is selected, a value between 1 and the total number of days contained within that schedule will be sampled without replacement (if multiple pings per day, each will contain the same randomSequence on any given day).
Longitudinal
  • Automatic vs. Manual Schedule application
    Do you want to apply this schedule to all participants when they enroll? If yes, toggle this on (). If no, toggle this off (). Manual schedule application is most useful when you have schedules you want to apply only to a subset of participants (e.g., participant-specific schedules, experimental designs with different assessment schedules in each arm).
  • When to start sending pings
    Participants can start receiving pings immediately after they enroll in your study (defaults to the following day). Use this field to control when participants begin receiving pings. This is very useful in implementing measurement burst designs. For example, suppose you want to implement a design wherein you ping participants 5x/day for 14 days, switch to daily assessment for 30 days, then ping again 5x/day for 14 days. To automate this within Inclivio, you would create three schedules:
    • ESM/EMA schedule that begins 1 day after enrollment
    • Longitudinal schedule that begins 15 days after enrollment
    • ESM/EMA schedule that begins 45 days after enrollment
  • Survey expiration
    Use this field to control when pings expire. When participants click on an expired ping, they are not redirected to the survey. Instead, they will reach a page informing them that the ping has expired.
  • Buffer between random pings
    If you are using a random interval design (i.e., sending pings randomly within pre-defined intervals of time), you may want to prevent pings from being sent too close together. Use this field to control the minimum amount of time random pings are separated by. If you attempt to create random pings with intervals larger than the value in this field you will receive a warning "Exceeds minimum separation minutes".
  • Ping frequency
    How often do you want your pings to be sent? This field allows you to select across intervals of days, weeks, months, and years. If you select a frequency by weeks, you will additionally select the days-of-the-week you want your pings to be sent. The image below, for example, indicates a design wherein pings are only sent Monday-Friday.

  • Schedule Length
    How many days do you want this schedule to run? Use this field to control the length of your schedule.
  • Schedule Mode
    This field gives you control over when your pings are sent.
    • Select Same every day to send the same set of pings every day the schedule is applied.
    • Select By weekday if you want your pings to differ by day-of-the-week. This is useful, for example, if you want to send pings only on certain days of the week (e.g., intensive longitudinal data only on weekends).
  • Random sequence
    Numeric value used to implement within-person experimental designs, sent as a survey parameter. If None is selected, this value is left blank. If All Pings is selected, a value between 1 and the total number of pings contained within that schedule will be sampled without replacement. If All Days is selected, a value between 1 and the total number of days contained within that schedule will be sampled without replacement (if multiple pings per day, each will contain the same randomSequence on any given day).
Dynamic
  • Automatic vs. Manual Schedule application
    Do you want to apply this schedule to all participants when they enroll? If yes, toggle this on (). If no, toggle this off (). Manual schedule application is most useful when you have schedules you want to apply only to a subset of participants (e.g., participant-specific schedules, experimental designs with different assessment schedules in each arm) or schedules you plan to activate/deactivate based on participants' survey responses.
  • Survey expiration
    Use this field to control when pings expire. When participants click on an expired ping, they are not redirected to the survey. Instead, they will reach a page informing them that the ping has expired.
  • Buffer between random pings
    If you are using a random interval design (i.e., sending pings randomly within pre-defined intervals of time), you may want to prevent pings from being sent too close together. Use this field to control the minimum amount of time random pings are separated by. If you attempt to create random pings with intervals larger than the value in this field you will receive a warning "Exceeds minimum separation minutes".
  • Silent Pings
    Because dynamic schedules are designed to be event-contingent (rather than contingent on time-of-day), you do not know a priori what time of day pings from a dynamic schedule will be sent. If you wish to prevent pings being sent at certain times, you can use these controls to do so. For example, pings silent after 8pm and silent before 6am will not be sent to the participant during these hours. If you only toggle one of these options, the interval will begin/end at midnight (non-inclusive). For example, if you select silent before 6am, pings can be sent anytime 6am to 11:59pm.
Creating Pings
After adjusting your schedule's settings, it is time to create the pings you want to send to your participants. An initial random-interval ping with the default reminder frequency and timing is created for you. You can change these settings, or add another ping by selecting the "Add Ping" button.
Dynamic pings are sent based on time-since-activation rather than time of day. To control when pings are sent after schedule activation, select the appropriate hours, minutes, and days. For example, if you wish to ping your participants every 5 minutes for 25 minutes once the schedule is activated, you would send the following pings in a dynamic schedule.
Ping containers that are red indicate that the ping is lacking sufficient information. Ping containers that are outlined in dark blue indicate that the ping has complete information.
To remove a ping, select the close in the top right corner of the ping container.
Fixed vs. Random Pings
Fixed pings are always sent at the time you input. For example, if yo always want to send your participants a ping at 7:30pm, you would create the following ping. Note that the Randomize ping toggle is not activated below ().
Random pings are always sent within the interval you specify. For example, if you want to send a ping between 2pm and 4pm, you would create the following ping. Note that the Randomize ping toggle is activated ().
You can mix-and-match fixed and random pings to achieve your optimal study design. (You can also mix-and-match multiple schedules to implement more complex designs).