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Beiwe Research Administration Manual
This Wiki Has Moved and this page is probably out of date. You can find the new wiki page here: Updated Beiwe-Research-Administration-Manual
As a Research Collaborator you have the ability to do the following tasks through the study portal website:
- Create new Beiwe Patient IDs and temporary passwords to use to register your study participants
- Create, edit, and deploy surveys
- Create, edit, and deploy audio surveys
- Download study data
Research collaborators will receive their login credentials from the Onnela Lab Research Administrator.
Please immediately change your password to a secure password of your choice by clicking on the "Manage Credentials" tab. Complete the "Reset Your Password" section, and click on the "Change Password" button.
To create or edit a new written survey:
- Choose the name of your study from the View Study drop down menu in the top left side of the screen, scroll down under the Patient section and click "Create New Survey" to create a survey. If you have multiple surveys for a study, they will appear in a list.
- To add a question to the survey, click the "Add Question" button at the bottom of the page.
- To create and edit questions, fill in the appropriate fields in the pop-up, including Question Text, Question Type, and then click the "Save" button.
- Edit the timing of the surveys by using the scheduling system and clicking the "Add Time" button to set the time.
- After any change, click the "Save and Deploy" button to save the changes.
If you would like the survey to appear when the participant in the study first downloads the app, click the box "Show Survey notification immediately when the user downloads this survey". If no days/times are scheduled for the survey it will only show once -- when the participant first enrolls. (However, if the participant gets a new phone or needs to delete/reinstall Beiwe, if they use the same patient ID, they will see this survey again. You may/may not want to instruct participants to complete it or just skip through the questions and submit so as to delete it.)
If you would like to use the randomized survey functionality, click on the "Randomize" or the "Randomize" without replacement" button on the bottom of the page and specify how many questions you'd like to be included in each survey. "Randomize without replacement" means all questions will be presented before starting over while "randomize" alone will just choose the specified number of questions each time the survey is presented.
To create or edit a new audio survey:
- Choose the name of your study from the View Study drop down menu in the top left side of the screen, scroll down under the Patient section and click "Create New Audio Survey" to create a survey. If you have multiple surveys for a study, they will appear in a list.
- Enter the "Voice Recording Prompt" directly into the Edit Survey section. This will appear on the screen when the participant is directed to the audio survey section from the app notification. Wording for the "Voice Recording Prompt" is completely customizable.
- Edit the timing of the surveys by using the scheduling system and clicking the "Add Time" button to set the time.
- After any change, click the "Save and Deploy" button to save the changes.
Technical Settings: Researchers should use the "Compressed audio" feature as a default, unless their study has specific needs related to uncompressed audio.
Uncompressed audio recordings sample at a higher rate (16,000, 22,000 or 44,100 Hz) and can reach the quality equivalent to CD quality. However, the cost is excessive data storage. Roughly 5mb of data would be collected for each minute of uncompressed audio at the 44,100 Hz level.
Although uncompressed audio takes up quite a lot of space, compression leads to compromised audio features (even if not audible to a person), and this may have data implications depending on your study aims. Please consult with the Onnela Lab if you would like to discuss this further.
Some settings, including the Passive Data settings, and the consent text, can only be edited by an Onnela Lab member but you will be able to view the settings. Since the Beiwe Research Platform is geared toward collection of research-grade passive sensor data, the app itself is meant to be minimalistic.
When considering the passive data settings and tradeoffs it may be helpful to note that the global positioning system (GPS) sensor setting is more of a battery issue in that this sensor utilizes the phone's battery capacity while the Accelerometer produces a lot of data, so would impact data storage capacity.
A participant in a study with all data streams turned on could generate about 1 gigabyte of data per month. Most of this is accelerometer data, since every accelerometer datapoint is about 50 bytes of data, and the accelerometer records about 5 to 100 datapoints per second. Other data streams produce less data simply because they record less frequently. This would likely be a worst case scenario as more recently we've been limiting the accelerometer data to reduce these numbers.
The Android and Apple iOS phones support different passive data collection items. The Beiwe study settings will be ignored if the phone does not support an enabled setting. Thus, if "Phone calls" is enabled, this data will only be collected from Android phones since Apple does not permit accessing this data.
Beiwe typically relies on a reliable WiFi connection to upload data collected from a study participant. However, for studies that want the data more immediately, or have other specific study aims, a study can be configured for data upload to go over the participant's cellular plan. As this can be costly, collaborators generally reimburse study participants for the cost of their data plans or only accept participants with unlimited data plans. Study participants will have different providers for their cell phone plans and each provider offers different terms for their data plans and tend to change the terms frequently.
While most collaborators choose to consent study participants using the traditional paper-based methods, Beiwe can also be used to provide consent electronically if approved by your IRB. The Android and IPhone have two distinct consent processes. You will need to work with Onnela Lab to set up both to accommodate your study participants. However, the text can be re-used.
The default text for the Android Consent Form is: I have read and understood the information about the study and all of my questions about the study have been answered by the study researchers.
The Researcher will go through the Required Readings with the participant, after which the participant will hit the "I Consent" button, and the app will be activated on the phone.
The iOS Beiwe app offers seven headings in the consent process of which you may use all, some or none. The default set up is that all fields are blank and that none of these screens are shown during registration. However, if you would like to use these screens for sharing information or gaining consent just provide your desired text for one or more of these topics to Onnela Lab.
The seven optional topics are:
- Welcome
- Data Gathering
- Privacy
- Time Commitment
- Study Survey
- Study Tasks
- Withdrawing
Each topic has two screens. The first screen is designed to give a one or two sentence explanation as shown above and the second screen provides the "learn more" information.
After stepping through each of the topics that are populated with text, the "learn more" text is compiled into one document as shown below and is presented to the participant for review and to ask for their consent to join the study.
After the IRB is finalized, the study can get underway. Collaborators should meet or discuss with the Onnela Lab to ensure the Passive Data Settings are agreed on.
Prior to the kick off of your Beiwe study please provide the following items to the Onnela Lab:
- Title for Project
- PI should send team's names and email addresses that will need access to the Beiwe study
- Copy of the IRB approval
- Copy of the IRB materials
- Text for consent -- Android, if applicable
- Text for consent -- Apple, if applicable
- Text for the app's "Call My Clinician" button
- Approximate number of patients/study participants anticipated in study
- Approximate duration of the study
- "Allow Data Upload Over Cellular Plan" Setting
Research collaborators will enroll new participants in the study by creating and assigning Beiwe Patient IDs.You have the option to create on new patient ID or many.
To create one patient ID:
- Click the "Add New Patient" button on the study screen, and a new 8-character Beiwe ID and temporary password will be generated at the top of the screen.
- The new Beiwe ID and temporary password should be given to a study participant to be used when they register for your study from the Beiwe app on their phone.
To create many patient IDs:
- Click the "Add Many New Patients" button on the study screen, and a window will pop up asking the number of patient IDs you would like to generate and the name of the file you would like the IDs to export to.
- Fill in those fields and click Create New Patient IDs
- The new Beiwe IDs and temporary passwords will be downloaded into a .csv file (can be opened using Microsoft Excel) and can be given to participants when they register for your study from the Beiwe app on their phone.
Notes:
It is the researcher's responsibility to keep track of the Beiwe Patient ID and the participant's identity. In keeping with IRB requirements, the Beiwe app ties all data collected to the Beiwe Participant ID and does not know the participant name or other identifying information.
The first time you want to download data, researchers will need to go to the "Manage Credentials" page, and under the "Generate New Data-Download & API Credentials" heading, click the yellow button ("Reset Data-Download API Access Credentials).
Keep these credentials in a secure/password protected area. You will need these credentials to access data each time you want to download data; these will be your same credentials to access data for all the studies you have access to in the system. You only need to generate the data download credentials the first time you access data (you do NOT need to generate new credentials each time you access data). Once you have created and saved your Credentials in the above step, for all future data download needs you can go directly to the step below and use your saved credentials.
Log into the Beiwe backend. Under the Download Data tab, choose Download Raw/Chunked Data and enter your access key and secret key and select the study, patient ID, data streams, and date ranges desired. Use CtrA (control all) to select all data types for a particular patient ID. The End Date and Time will default to the current date if not entered.
Click Download Data and a zip of the requested csv files will be created. After downloading data, you will need to refresh the page and re-enter your access and secret keys to download more data. This is how the web page was designed for security purposes.
The format of the data files downloaded will vary by sensor according to the specific data being collected, however, the same metadata is provided for all raw data collected or any event recorded. Specifically, the first two columns for all raw data will provide the Unix timestamp and the UTC time to aid with data analysis. For more information, including an explanation of the sensors and data collected by Beiwe, please see Beiwe Data Privacy and Security and Beiwe Passive Data.
We recommend downloading 1GB of data or less at a time. If your computer times out or the download doesn't complete, try downloading less data. Note, while the amount of data depends on your study settings, the typical Onnela Lab study settings generates approximately 1GB of raw data per subject-month.
Note : The Download Data tab has two options: “Download Raw/Chunked Data” or “Download Processed (Pipeline Output) Data”. Please use the former “Download Raw/Chunked Data”. The second option is currently only for Onnela Lab use. Open source users can find more information here.
A Beiwe API is also available to download data directly to collaborators' servers and databases. We recommend the API be used for downloading large amounts of data. More information is available here:.