Surveys are not shown after 50-80 days (while study duration is 120)

Support
1

Hi There,

I have a clinical study going on in which participants will fill out a daily questionnaire over a period of 120 days. I just noted that after a certain amount of days (it varies), the daily questionnaires are not shown to the participants anymore. I cannot figure out why this is. I also have monthly questionnaires, and they are shown to the participants.

As it is a clinical study, I am now missing crucial data, so I really hope for a quick fix!

Study ID = 2045
The two subjects where i notice the issues are:
ethica ID 61629; survey 15654 (from december 19th no surveys are shown to this participant
ethica ID 62270; survey 15654 (from January 21 no surveys will be shown)
ethica ID 62630; survey 15654 (from January 20 no survey will be shown)
etc.

Thanks for the support!

2

Hi @a.m.kaag

Welcome to the forum, and thanks for the detailed explanation of the problem.

I checked and found the issue. The problem is Ethica plans only 50 sessions in the feature at once, so in your case of daily surveys, this translates into 50 days in the future. Further sessions are generated when the apps connect to the server for a data refresh.

It seems there is an issue with data refresh logic that it was not invoked in the past 50 days for these three individuals. I manually invoked it for 61629, and further sessions were generated as expected.

We will fix this problem in our next update (within the next two weeks). But the work-around is very simple. Just manually reload participant’s device.

Hope it helps

3

First of all, happy new year and thank you for your fast response.

It was indeed solved for 61629, however, i tried the same thing for the other participants (reloading the device) and this did not solved the issue.

For 62270, the surveys first stopped after 81 days, after reloading it, they continue until day 101 (which is an improvement, but not the full 120 days they need to fill out the surveys).

For the others, after reloading the device, the number of days that the survey is shown did not change I furthermore wonder whether it has to do with the fact that ethica only plans 50 sessions, as for most participants, actually 90 days are shown, not 50.

Do you think this will be solved with the new software release, and do i need to do something to make sure that the updated version is on the participants phones?

62758: no surveys from day 94: joined 2022-11-07 11:07:

62897: no surveys from day 93: joined 2022-11-09 11:52: n

62954: no surveys from day 92: joined 2022-11-10 13:28:

63075: no surveys from day 87: joined 2022-11-14 11:55

63534: no surveys from day 83: joined 2022-11-18 10:52

63741: no surveys from day 50: joined 2022-11-24 10:41

64526: no surveys from day 49: joined 2022-12-02 10:53

65004: no surveys from day 49: joined 2022-12-12 14:43

65018: no surveys from day 49: joined 2022-12-12 17:23

65172: no surveys from day 49: joined 2022-12-16 11:04

65303: no surveys from day 51: joined 2022-12-20 16:50

65325: no surveys from day 50: joined 2022-12-21 17:03

4

Hi @a.m.kaag

Happy New Year. Hope you had a great time during the holidays. And sorry for the late reply. Somehow I missed your question.

I checked all of these people and they all are ok. Please keep in mind that Ethica creates 50 sessions for each triggering logic. When the number of sessions in the future drops below 10, it creates enough to reach 50 again. This is to make sure we do not make thousands of sessions per participant, and slowing down the system.

All people you mentioned above have more than 10 scheduled in the future. And when it drops below 10, the system generates more.

Regarding the issue I mentioned, you can monitor your participants each week. If anyone has less than one week remained, they need to manually reload. We will update our app in the next week or two to fix this problem. I will update you here.

Thanks,
Mohammad

5

Please let me know when the update is on. It will become rather difficult if I need to manually update all sessions for each participant weekly.

For sure @a.m.kaag My colleagues are working on this issue right now and will be part of our next app update. We will update you here when this is live.

Also, please note this does not happen often. In fact less than 5% of the time the session update is not triggered. So I would not expect you to see this in your participants anymore even before the update.

6

I was wondering whether there is already an update on this issue.
for example, participant (61629) only has 23 sessions in the future, while i manually reloaded the device today. Moreover, while for most participants, indeed, only 50 sessions are shown in the future, there are some for which all sessions are loaded at once (62954 and 63075). So the loading issue does not seem to be very consistent!

Kind regards,
Anne Marije

7

Hi @a.m.kaag

I checked again all users you mentioned and did not see a concerning issue there. As I explained in my above post, the sessions are regenerated when they fall below 10. All users you mentioned have more than that already scheduled.

I understand you are concerned about this problem happening again. We have already fixed the problem and will be in our next app update (next week).

Thanks,
Mohammad