You can host multiple waves of participants in a single study. Designing your study with multiple waves in mind is recommended to ensure the best experience for participants across each wave. Studies can also be copied to facilitate unanticipated waves. This article includes considerations for:
Note: Participant access must be live on a site in order for participants to log in. Review your Site Subscription to ensure you have an upcoming phase of access for the second wave.
Designing a study for multiple waves of participants
Setting up a study for multiple waves is similar to setting up a study for a single wave. However, additional consideration will need to be taken when configuring:
Activity dates
Notifications
Response visibility
Participant management
Activity Dates
Each Activity must have a start date and a due date. The Due Date can be modified as needed throughout the study, however, the Start Date cannot be changed once it has passed.
We recommend programming your Start and Due dates to correspond with the schedule of the first wave. The Due Dates can then be edited to correspond with the next wave when needed. This will prevent Activities from appearing as overdue to participants in the second wave.
Note: Participants are able to complete any Activities that have already started. If all Activity Start Dates are in the past, participants in the second wave could complete all Activities in one sitting. To help participants stay on track, consider posting a guided schedule for Activity completion on the Home page using a message card.
If you wish to be able to change the activity start dates to reflect the intended schedule of completion, consider using separate studies for each wave.
Notifications
When using the same study for multiple waves, participants joining after the first wave will not receive the New Activity Available notification, as the Activity Start Dates will be in the past. To accommodate for this, Moderators can send an email broadcast to remind participants of Activities they must complete.
Response visibility
If any Activity responses in the study are public or unbiased, it is important to note that participants in the second wave will be able to see the responses of participants from the first wave.
If you wish to keep the responses of each wave completely separate, consider using separate studies.
Participant management
After the first wave wraps up, it is essential that you deactivate or remove the first wave of participants from the study. Participants who are not deactivated or removed will be able to log in during the second wave.
Deactivating or removing participants from the study will not remove any of their response data.
Running new participants through a copied study
If the original study was not designed with a second wave in mind, you may prefer to run the new participants through a study copy. A study copy will be an exact duplicate of the original study’s Home page, Activities & Tasks, Discussions, etc.
Warning: The data from the copied study will not aggregate with that of the original study within Recollective. Once exported, response data can be combined externally using Excel, Google Sheets, or other third party software.
To run a new wave of participants through a study copy:
Change the state of the original study to CLOSED. This will prevent the first wave participants from logging back in once the site goes live for the second wave.
Copy the closed study.
Update the Activities Start and Due dates to match the schedule for the second wave.
Modify any other study settings as needed.
Change the state of the copied study to OPEN.
Add and invite the second wave of participants.
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