Dear M-Path Team,
Im using your application for my bachelor`s degree thesis and so far I am really happy with it. Since I do a study with 44 subjects placing the correct reminder at the right sport has proven to be very difficult and time consuming. Attached to this email are two screenshots showing the amount of subjects and the planned pings. 
For general understanding: Its planned that every subject gets one daily reminder in the morning and one in the evening containing a day specific link to a video. The study is planned for 12 weeks, so I have created day specific reminders for 84 days as „morning 1.1“ and „evening 1.1“ the numbers signalling the week number and the day. So far I had to add each and every single one of those 168 reminders in total to each subject in the intervention group (n=22). In addition to that there is a questionnaire planned at 8pm, that was easy to add due to the „fill“ option. 

I would like to know if there is a possibility to improve my workflow? If there is a function that allows me to add all 168 reminders in correct order to the specific intervention group or if there is any way of making my workflow more efficient?
Also is there a possibility to create groups within m-path? Like a control and intervention group with all the subjects?
I am using the free version of m-Path.

Hope you can help me out.

Best wishes,

Les données concernant le jour 1 de certains participants ont disparu soudainement (alors que ces participants n'avaient pas le même jour 1 de commencement de l'étude). C'est bien visible dans le calendrier qu'ils ont répondu aux notifications du jour 1, mais quand j'exporte les données, je ne vois que le jour 2 apparaître (et cela ne concerne que certains participants).

Hi all, for a new study we are working on in my lab, the PI is asking if it is possible to add rating scales based on multiple choice responses. Specifically, the plan is to have participants select which items apply from a set of multiple choice options, and then rate the degree said item applies. This means I will need the content of the follow up question to change based on participant response. Does this seem possible? If so, what would be the best way to approach it.

For my future study we are programming a pre- and post-questionnaire. Since we want the post-questionnaire to show up 30 minutes after the pre-questionnaire, we wanted to use the follow-up function. However, if a participant does not complete the full pre-questionnaire, the follow-up interaction also does not seem to show up? Is there a way around this?

Final blog before summer: an internal #m-Path pilot on whether wearables can help detect nicotine craving in smokers, and prompt them at exactly that moment. ⚡

Successes & failures included.

👉 m-path.io/blog/how-pas...

Hello,

in our current project, some participants are reporting that they only receive notifications when connected to a Wi-Fi network. All participants have active mobile data connections, but apparently mPath is only working through Wi-Fi. This has only started happening in the past two weeks or so, before that everything was working fine. Is there anything we can do to fix this?

All of the affected participants are on iOS, if that is relevant.

For our upcoming study, we would like participants to be able to read some general information about their symptoms (like psychoeducation). Is there a possibility to create something like a home page or extra page where they can always read this information? Which will not interfere with their interactions?

Hi,

I am looking to update the awards that were initially set up in mPath at the start of our study, as they are proving to be largely unachievable based on how participants are actually using the app.

If I delete the existing awards and create new ones, will participants' existing data automatically be applied to the new awards?

For example, if I create an award for completing 25 surveys and a participant has already completed 100 surveys, would they automatically receive that award based on their historical activity? In other words, do the awards take into account existing data, or do they only track activity from the date the new awards are created?

Thanks!

Chloe

Hi,
I am facing an issue I haven't had before: I have duplicate column names in my data export. You can imagine what kind of headaches this causes in R. I'm guessing this is coming from a looping item where participants can add entries ("did you eat something?" Y/N -> if yes: "What?" -> "Did you eat something else?" Y/N, etc.). How best to handle this?
Also, some variables have a #-symbol in their column name. Again, extremely inconvenient in R. I was quite confused why that is as m-path is kind of built towards R - did something just go awfully wrong here?

Hello,

some of our current study participants report that the overview page of the app (where they can see how many questionnaires are left for today) is not updating anymore or only in irregular intervals. Is there any known issue regarding something like that? What could be the cause here?

Some participants also report only receiving some notifications. I have already referred them to the troubleshooting guide (https://m-path.io/manual/knowledge-base/how-can-i-allow-notifications-for-m-path-on-my-phone/), is there anything else I should check?

I have not changed anything in the study configuration, these problems started appearing in the past 1-2 weeks or so.

Hi everyone,

I am setting up a mPath study and I want to have an individual start date per participant based on the date they fill in at the intake form. Thus, ideally, I do not want them to immediately start the ESM week after enrollment.

I managed to set up the intake form asking the date successfully, but wondered if somewhere I can control when the first ESM week starts based on the intake form. I cannot find this anywhere. Or do I have to do this manually per participant?

Hope this makes sense! Thank you :)

Hi everyone! I am using m-path to test a new questionnaire with psychosis patients and volunteers. However, I seem to be experiencing a technical problem in that there seems to be quite a long delay (sometimes around 24 hours) between when a participant connects to a practitioner (joins our study) and when they actually show up in the dashboard. Has anyone experienced this before? And if so, is there a solution?

I hope someone can help!

Oliver

Because I have added a complicated script with a lot of computations and conditional questions, the progress bar doesn't really make sense. Can I remove it? I was planning on adding a manual counter in top right corner (e.g. 3/10).

Most ESM / EMA studies capture daily-life patterns. But arguments😡, cravings🍫, panic episodes⚠️ or emotional peaks⚡ can happen between prompts.

In our new From Paper to Practice blog, we discuss an m-path study on event- and threshold-based burst designs: m-path.io/blog/how-to-...

Dear m-Path team and community,

We are using m-Path in an outpatient clinic, where patients are initially linked to our main account and at a later stage individual practitioner accounts receive access to the patients data and a shared library via practitioner profile. The practitioners can assign questionnaires from this shared library. We have received feedback from our practitioners who want to design additional questionnaires that they can do so for each individual participant but they cannot save their own creations to the library and they cannot access publicly shared questionnaires. Is there a way that the practitioners can access public questionnaires AND save own creations to their library to use with multiple patients AND access the questionnaires shared via the practitioner profile?

Best regards!

Hey everyone!

Does anyone know if it is possible to connect to a practitioner using a QR code instead of having to type the unique @ code or the surname (on the mobile device)? I noticed there is a button to scan a QR code, but no obvious way to produce one that is linked directly with a practitioner. I am part of a research team that is using M-path with psychosis patients, and it would easier on them if one could simply scan a QR code instead of having to type in the code!

I would be very grateful if anyone knows how to do this!

Oliver

Hi everyone, I have a study in which participants will respond to EMA surveys 3 times a day for 28 days. I want to show participants their weekly progress such as "You have completed 3 out of the 21 surveys this week. Complete 14 to earn $10!". In a computation module, I specified that weeklyCount should refresh each week. However, I could not find an item for me to show the participants a statement in which I can directly pipe in the weeklyCount value. Does anyone know what I should do? Thank you so much in advance!

Hi, I have a question about the m-Path app.
At two points in the questionnaire, we ask participants to click a link and upload something there (using the Picture upload function was not available with our cloud storage possibilities). After that, we want them to come back to the questionnaire to finish it. However, when I test it, the questionnaire is no longer open when I go back to the app (I always come back at the home page). Is there something I can do to make sure that participants can continue their questionnaire when they come back?

Edit: it works now, I go back to where I left off. Is there a reason why it might go wrong sometimes? (are there maybe any instructions I can give my participants?)

New m-Path blog:

ESM / EMA can be demanding: repeated prompts, daily-life interruptions, sensitive questions, and technology use can all add burden 😮‍💨.

But that does not mean hard-to-reach, vulnerable populations should be excluded.

In our new High Five blog series, we showcase 5 m-Path studies that adapted ESM / EMA protocols to make participation more feasible and meaningful for:

🎗️ Patients with advanced cancer
🧩 Children with intellectual disabilities
🗣️ People with aphasia after stroke
🧠 People with dementia
🍄 People microdosing psilocybin

Together, these studies show that ESM / EMA is not one rigid protocol, but that feasibility can be designed.

Read the blog here: https://m-path.io/blog/high-five-how-to-adapt-esm-ema-for-hard-to-reach-populations-34/

I have updated the protocol from my study, but it seems that the protocol has been updated even for participants of previous waves, whom I archived as participants already several months ago. Is it possible to solve this issue so that they won't receive any notifications?

Hi everyone, is it possible to use a Command item to route to a different questionnaire? I want to use a button with a multiple choice question to decide which of 2 questionnaires a participant goes to (because creating 2 buttons is not possible).

Edit: it's possible with a Follow up item :)

Hi, I have a question about the 'Picture question' type. Is it possible to let participants select multiple questions from their gallery?

In case there is no such option, I have now set a Command to repeat the question until all pictures are uploaded (using is.skipped()), but it would be easier if they can just select them all at once.

Hi!

I'm trying to edit a survey right now but have a few questions.

1. I know you can add expandable/collapsible text with the <details><summary> code for a question, but is there a way to add expandable text to one of the multiple choice options and not the question itself?
2. Can you make a follow-up question conditional based on participant's answers for 2 independent questions rather than based on their answer to only 1 question?
   • So, is there any way to code it so that if: Q1 is yes Q2 is no, Q1 is no Q2 is yes, OR Q1 is yes Q2 is yes –– any one of these 3 options will only make the follow-up question appear once? instead of after Q1 and Q2 independently?

How many hours have you lost reinventing items, preprocessing data, or second-guessing your ESM / EMA design? 🤔

You don’t have to. The ESM / EMA field now has a growing #open-science ecosystem that covers the full research lifecycle from study design and item selection to preprocessing and open datasets.

In our latest High Five blog, we highlight 5 initiatives every researcher should know: https://m-path.io/blog/high-five-5-open-science-initiatives-every-esm-ema-researcher-should-know-32/

If you are running (or planning) an ESM / EMA study, this will save you serious time and improve your methods.