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Step Types

Zachary Bornemeier
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The RKStudio survey editor provides a number of types of steps you can use in your surveys.

Contents

 

 

Instruction Step

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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.” “More detailed information about the upcoming questions.”
Icon Image URL Optional link to a small icon that will appear above the instructions. http://somewhere.com/image.png
Image URL Optional link to an image that will appear below the instructions. http://somewhere.com/image.png

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Question Step

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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

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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?”
Placeholder The “watermark” text that should display for the form item before the user enters an answer. “Pain Score”
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.



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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. -


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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


steptypes_consentsharing.png

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>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…</p>”


Completion Step

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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

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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

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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


Web View Step

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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);

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