Automated mails for weekly diary study involving two participant groups

Question

Hello everyone,

Hope you are well.

Just to give a context for my question – I plan to conduct a weekly diary study (12 weeks) involving two participant groups: managers and their team members.

At the beginning of the study, the managers will receive a pre-survey where they will nominate 3-7 of their team members to participate in the study. After that the team members are supposed to also receive a pre-survey. Once the manager and at least 3 team members completed the pre-survey they should receive weekly surveys starting from the subsequent week. That is, every Thursday the managers receive a weekly survey while the team members will receive another survey.

My question is – how do I set up a chain of automated mails that ensures that at least three team members have completed the pre-survey before the weekly surveys are scheduled?

I was thinking of integrating the questions for the manager and the team members into one long pre-survey and then creating a chain of emails, going from team member to team member but the issue is that if the survey gets stuck with one team member then the whole team will not start the weekly part of the study. Ideally it would be possible to send out individual pre-surveys to team members and then create an automated check how many team members completed the pre-survey every time a team member completes it. Then if at least three team members completed the pre-survey the weekly surveys could be scheduled in the following week. The other option is to check this manually and schedule the weekly surveys once the leader and at least 3 team members completed their pre surveys but ideally there is a more automated option.

Could anyone please kindly advise me on how I can work this out? Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

how do I set up a chain of automated mails that ensures that at least three team members have completed the pre-survey before the weekly surveys are scheduled?

If you need cross-case information, either statistic() or the database for contents will be useful.

I would try statistic() first, because it requires no data except the group ID (and eventually a round ID) being set during the interview. You can count the number of other cases that have the same group (plus eventually round) ID, and if this is 2+, you can schedule the next mailing via mailSchedule(). If may, however, still be necessary to store the person IDs from a group in the database for contents in order to send the mailing to all group members.