The RKStudio survey editor provides a number of types of steps you can use in your surveys.
Contents
Instruction Step
An instruction step is the most basic step type. It allows you to present some simple text content to the user.
| Property | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Title | The large text displayed at the top. | Mood Survey, Next, Thank You |
| Text | The smaller descriptive text below the title. | Next, we will ask you a handful of questions about your mood. |
| Detail Text | Additional description below “Text.” | Please describe your mood in as much detail as you can. |
| Icon Image URL |
Optional link to a small icon that will appear above the instructions. For security reasons, images must be hosted on CareEvolution's servers; external links are not permitted. Contact us if you need to host an image. |
http://rkstudio.careevolution.com/image.png |
| Image URL |
Optional link to an image that will appear below the instructions. For security reasons, images must be hosted on CareEvolution's servers; external links are not permitted. Contact us if you need to host an image. |
http://rkstudio.careevolution.com/image.png |
Question Step
A question step allows you to present a single question to the user. If you would like to present multiple questions on the same step, you should instead use a Form Step (see below).
| Property | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Title | The large text displayed at the top. | How much pain are you in right now? |
| Text | The smaller descriptive text below the title. | Indicate using the scale below. |
| Optional | Whether the step is optional. If a step is optional, a “skip” button will appear at the bottom of the step and the user will not be required to answer the question. | Yes No |
| Answer Format | How you would like the person to answer the question. Different answer formats have additional options. See Answer Formats. |
Text Choice Date Scale (Discrete) |
Additional fields will be displayed depending on the answer format that was selected.
Form Step
A form step allows you to present multiple questions to the user on a single step. The form step has the following properties:
| Property | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Title | The large text displayed at the top. | In the last 7 days… |
| Text | The smaller descriptive text below the title. | Please answer the following questions |
| Optional | Whether the step is optional. If a step is optional, a “skip” button will appear at the bottom of the step and the user will not be required to fill out the step. | Yes No |
Additionally, you can create any number of form items. Each form item has the following properties:
| Property | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Identifier | The identifier of the form item. Responses to this question will be stored with this as the key. | SMOKING_YESNO |
| Optional | Whether the form item is optional. Optional form items do not need to be filled out in order for the participant to proceed to the next question. | Yes No |
| Text | The text of the question | How much pain are you in right now? |
| Hide This Item | Whether the form item is hidden based on previous answers or participant data. See below for more details. |
Never If a condition is met |
| Answer Format | How you would like the person to answer the question. Different answer formats have additional options. See Answer Formats. |
Text Choice Date Scale (Discrete) |
Additional fields for each form item will be displayed depending on the answer format that was selected.
You may conditionally hide a form item based on the result of a previous answer in this form or survey, participant demographic data, or custom fields.
- Select "If a condition is met" for the "Hide this item..." option.
- Select a condition and value from the drop-down menu. This example will hide the current form item if the participant answers 'yes' to a previous form item asking if they're a smoker.
- You may use the "AND", "OR" and "NOT" buttons to create more complex conditions. This example will hide the current form item if the participant is a non-smoker AND a male.
Visual Consent Step
The visual consent step presents the sections of a consent document sequentially in a clean, graphical manner. See consent surveys for more information.
| Property | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Consent Document | The consent document which will be used to populate the various visual consent sub-steps. | - |
Consent Review Step
The consent review step allows the user to review and sign the selected consent document. See consent surveys for more information.
| Property | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Consent Document | The consent document the participant will review. | - |
| Signature | Optional signature from the consent document to record. | Participant Signature |
| Requires Scroll to Bottom | Forces the user to scroll through the entire consent document. | Yes No |
Consent Sharing Step
The consent sharing step is essentially a pre-built question step based around asking if a participant is willing to share their data with other institutions.
Functionally, this works like any other question step; the answer the participant gives does not affect their experience or any of the data sharing within RKStudio. The researcher is responsible for looking at this answer and handling the data accordingly.
| Property | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Title | The large text displayed at the top. | Data Sharing |
| Text | The smaller descriptive text below the title. | Would you like to share your data with other researchers? |
| Optional | Whether the step is optional. If a step is optional, a “skip” button will appear at the bottom of the step and the user will not be required to fill out the step. | Yes No |
| Investigator Short Description | The “Short Description” of the investigator that is used in the first choice. | University Study |
| Investigator Long Description | The “Long Description” of the investigator that is used in the second choice. | University Research Study |
| Learn More Content | The content that appears when the user taps the “Learn more about data sharing” button near the top of the step. Can be HTML. | <p>Here is how your data is shared…</p> |
Completion Step
The completion step is simply an instruction step that displays an animated checkmark when the user arrives at this step. It is meant to indicate that the user has completed something, and is frequently used as a “Thank you” step at the end of a survey.
| Property | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Title | The large text displayed at the top. | Mood Survey, Next, Thank You |
| Text | The smaller descriptive text below the title. | Next, we will ask you a handful of questions about your mood. |
Image Capture Step
An image capture step prompts the user to take an image with their phone’s camera.
| Property | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Accessibility Instructions | Accessibility voice-over text for the image frame. | Take a picture of the affected area. |
| Accessibility Hint | Accessibility voice-over text for the capture button. | Press to capture an image. |
Video Capture Step
An image capture step prompts the user to take a video with their phone’s camera.
| Property | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Accessibility Instructions | Accessibility voice-over text for the image frame. | Take a video of the motion. |
| Accessibility Hint | Accessibility voice-over text for the capture button. | Press to start video capture. |
| Camera Location | Which camera to use. | Front, Back, Unspecified |
| Duration | The duration of the video, in seconds. | 120 |
| Mute Audio | Whether to capture a video without audio. | Yes, No |
Video Instruction Step
A video instruction step displays a fixed video containing instructions for the participant.
Here are some tips for using videos in your surveys:
- Videos used in the video instruction step must be hosted on an external site; you cannot upload a video directly to RKStudio.
- Amazon S3 is a common choice for hosting video files. File-sharing services like Dropbox are suitable for smaller videos, but can experience significant lag loading larger files.
- You must specify a URL to a video file in a format supported by ResearchKit (e.g., AIFF, MPEG, MP4, QuickTime). Consult your file-sharing provider's documentation to find out how to get a shareable link to the original video file. For example, in Dropbox you can configure a shared link to download the original file.
- Video-sharing sites like YouTube or Vimeo will not work in a video instruction step, but you can use them in a custom web view step.
- You can use a MP4 compression tool to reduce the size of your video file and reduce loading time.
| Property | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Step title. | Getting Better Sleep. |
| Text | Accessibility voice-over text for the capture button. | Watch this video to get some tips on healthy sleep habits. |
| Detail Text | A second line of detailed text. | Video duration: 3 minutes. |
| Video URL |
A URL to to the video file in a format supported by ResearchKit (e.g., AIFF, MP4, MPEG, QuickTime). |
https://example.com/filename.mp4 |
| Thumbnail URL |
A static image to use as the thumbnail preview for the video. You may specify a thumbnail time or URL, but not both. For security reasons, images must be hosted on CareEvolution's servers; external links are not permitted. Contact us if you need to host an image. |
https://rkstudio.careevolution.com/thumbnail.png |
| Thumbnail Time (Seconds) |
If supported by the video format, RKStudio will obtain a static image from the specified time marker in the video. You may specify a thumbnail time or URL, but not both. |
30 |
Web View Step
The web view step allows for embedding any HTML, CSS, or JavaScript inside a survey. It allows for extreme flexibility in creating new instruments but requires the user to be able to code in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
| Property | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Height | The height of the web view step’s frame, in pixels. | 100, 200 |
| Web Content | HTML, including CSS or JavaScript, for the step. | Sample content is provided when you create a web view step. |
There is no built in “Continue” or “Skip” button in a web view step—it is the survey author’s responsibility to provide the ability for the participant to proceed.
To trigger the next step to appear, this line of JavaScript must be executed:
//'answer' is the result of the step that will be stored
window.webkit.messageHandlers.ResearchKit.postMessage(answer);