Hello everyone!



I am something akin to an administrative assistant for 4 faculty members, one of whom is PI for a burgeoning longitudinal research study (about 2.5 years now) with about 3 research assistants. None of them have any technical skills whatsoever while I happen to have a programming background, plus there are confidentiality issues at work, so the entire administration of the study (survey creation, logic, javascript, user id generation, distribution, incentives, literally anything that is not "analyzing result data" or "IRB issues") falls to me. Research administration is not my background or job function (nor does this faculty member have enough allocated support hours to sustain all of the work I do for them), so I'm keen to start automating this as much as possible. The challenge besides lack of time is that I am NOT going to be doing this forever (or really, past the next 3 or so months), so any solution I create needs to be able to be used and managed by someone else (who will definitely not be running or writing any Python scripts and will stare blankly at any mentions of "Qualtrics API").



So, for those of you who deal with sending/getting data from many surveys, what tools are you using to get the job done efficiently? Especially any visual/GUI-based tools?



Below are some more details about the research tasks/timeline, so you have an idea of what I'm hoping to automate:



* The study involves cohorts of participants taking 3 surveys. The second comes approximately 5-6 weeks after the first, and the third comes 6 months after the second. The PI keeps growing the project despite lack of staff, so there are now about 7-9 cohorts of 80-180 people each every year.



1. I receive a list of names and email addresses for the upcoming research cohort (comprised of participants in various executive education programs).

2. I generate a unique ID for each participant using a Python script, and create an Excel document with that info plus several embedded data to track people's completion of each survey (plus a couple of other things).

3. I upload this Excel document as a contact list in Qualtrics.

4. I create a copy of the particular survey and share a copy with RAs (with editing and access to Restricted Information disabled).

5. Each survey uses an Authenticator (based on email address) to bring in ID information and track who is doing the survey. At the end, it uses a contact list trigger to update the embedded data in the person's record to mark them as having done that survey.

6. I distribute the survey to the relevant contact list using personalized links.

7. I then need to send periodic reminders to incomplete participants. This is complicated by the fact that the survey is occasionally distributed via an anonymous link by staff associated with the executive education programs (this is also one of the reasons for the Authenticator). The Qualtrics Mailer will NOT remove anyone who did the survey via an anonymous link when sending reminders. To avoid sending reminders to people who already did it, I generate a sample of the original list that contains everyone not marked as complete and then email this sample. There are also other little annoyances with the mailer, like for example, if I send a new distribution to a person added later and then send a reminder to everyone in the original distribution, the person who in the new distribution will get a reminder even if they already did it because Qualtrics doesn't keep a static copy of the contact list in distributions.

8. The research team now wants additional little features like sending a nudge email to anyone who starts the survey but then leaves after say 1.5 days of inactivity.

9. I also have to give periodic updates on progress and update tables of response rates. This is complicated by the fact that we give participants feedback-reports based on some of the questions that participants can receive even if they don't want to participate in the research. So, they have the ability to "opt-out" (via survey question) of the research so they can still receive the feedback. However, they are still counted as a completed response. Moreover, some people we have to mark as ineligible. Those are also still counted (and we do not have the Incidence Reporting/Screened-Out add-on). To get an accurate total, I have to generate another sample that only counts people who haven't opted-out or been disqualified (tracked via more embedded data).



Life would be a lot simpler managing this outside of Qualtrics and automating things (emails/reminders in particular), and gathering reporting connected to and updating an easily searched/filtered database. Hoping to avoid reinventing any wheels here or making things harder for myself with any custom-built/coded solutions when there are other methods/tools/software I don't know about (given lack of experience in this area).