It may occur regularly that you only want to make a certain part of the CRF visible when first another condition is fulfilled. For example, if you ask whether a patient sometimes consumes alcohol, you only want the question about the amount of glasses per week to appear if the answer is ‘yes’. The research manager has a simple solution for this: the adding of conditions on parts of the CRF. In this manual you can read how this works.
For information about the study template and how to set it up we refer you to the manual ‘Setting up Template’.
Adding conditions
In the study template you can add conditions to both paragraphs and components. If you do or do not want to show an entire questionnaire then, dependent on the answer on a component outside of this list, you put all these questions in one paragraph. To add the condition you click on the pencil icon (Edit). Now a pop-up opens.
In the pop-up go to the tab ‘Conditions’. Now you select a component and thereafter the type of condition you want to connect to it (the available options differ per component). Finally, you choose the value to compare with.
Example :
- The first paragraph in a subchapter asks patients whether they smoke or use alcohol. The next paragraph is specifically about smoking, the third specifically about alcohol use.
- You only want to show the second paragraph when the answer to the question ‘Do you smoke?’ is ‘Yes’. When editing the paragraph you select the tab ‘Conditions’ the component ‘Do you smoke?’, then ‘Equal to’ and finally ‘Yes’.
- If a patient now answers that he does not smoke, the paragraph with questions about the subject ‘smoking’ will not be shown.
If you wan to add a condition to a component, instead of a paragraph, you click on ‘edit’ at the component instead of at the paragraph. The subsequent approach is the same.
Dependencies
Dependencies because of conditions:
Dependencies are not directly added by the user. They automatically appear in components when in another component or question a condition is added to this component.
In the above described example the second paragraph is dependent on the component ‘Do you smoke?’ and you can find the dependency in the last mentioned component. If you try to remove this component, you will be reminded of this dependency, as well as the fact that it and the accompanying condition will stop existing if you continue.
Dependencies because of other causes:
There are other kinds of dependencies that do not have anything to do with a connection within the CRF. This occurs when for example, a notification setting, a part of patient self service or a stratification criterium is connected to the component. In that case, you will see it reflected at the dependencies of the relevant component.