24 Oct Piping Fields 101
Have you ever struggled to write survey questions which read more naturally? For instance, consider gender-neutral phrasing. REDCap’s piping feature might be able to help with that.
Piping allows you take any previously entered value (like a first name) and display it anywhere else within the form. So instead of having to twist the question, “when is his/her birthday?” you can pipe in the respondent’s actual name, “when is John’s birthday? / When is Jane’s birthday?”
Adding piping to any question is easy: all you need is the variable name of the value you want to pipe.
For example, using two variables
- Source: First name (variable name = “fname”)
- Destination: Birth date (variable name = “dob”)
In order to pipe the first name value into the birth date field label, simply put the variable name of first name between two brackets. The field label Birth date will look like: “When is [fname]’s birthday?”
Step-by-step guidance
