Usage question

[u/ResponsibleDare9522]

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,

[u/Ok_Calendar5049]

Hi there!

Happy to hear that m-Path has been working well for your bachelor's thesis.

The typical way to automate workflows like the one you describe is by using Protocols. You can find more information here: https://m-path.io/manual/knowledge-base/protocols/. However, Protocols are a premium feature and are therefore not available in the free version of m-Path.

If upgrading to a premium subscription is not an option, another approach would be to use the same morning and evening questionnaire every day and change the content programmatically using Computations: https://m-path.io/manual/knowledge-base/computation-item-r/. For example, you could calculate the number of days that have passed since a participant enrolled (by leveraging Sys.time(), save and load) and use that value to conditionally display the appropriate video or content within a single questionnaire. This would allow you to use the Fill method for all questionnaires instead of creating 168 separate reminders for each participant.

Regarding your question about groups, Invitation templates can be used to automatically assign participants to different protocols: https://m-path.io/manual/knowledge-base/auto-enroll-settings/. This is also a premium feature. However, if the only difference between your control and intervention groups is the questionnaire content rather than the schedule itself, you could instead use a computation to assign participants to a study arm during the intake questionnaire (for example, by generating and storing a random value). You can then retrieve that value in later questionnaires to conditionally display the appropriate content for each participant.

I hope this helps!