Chapter 8 Registration options

Under this menu option, you edit all settings related to the online self-registration procedure.

Note: These settings do not affect the manual registration of participants which can be made by an administrator in the Participant view (Chapter 10).

Each project has a unique registration URL, and this URL is shown at the very top of the page. Underneath it is a checkbox labeled Registration possible. Check/uncheck this to enable/disable the registration. A message can be displayed instead of the registration form when the registration is closed, see more information below for Registration closed text.

Hint: The registration link can be distributed to users in several ways, eg. by linking to the registration page from other websites, or by qreating a QR code using free online tools.

Check participant fields that should be entered when registering The first table, allows you to specify what information is required to be submitted by the participant when they register their account. These are quite self explanatory (PID number is analogous to Social Security Number, SSN, or Swedish “personnummer”). If Password is not selected as an input, you can choose to generate a password for the participant, see option below.

In the larger table below that, you can edit the following:

PID name This lets you specify what the PID name is. In Sweden, this is called ”personnummer” whereas in the US it is called ”Social Security Number”, or SSN. Your country may have a different name for this, and this option lets you assign the appropriate name.

PID format example By typing here, you can present an example of the format you want the PID to be submitted in, such as ”19001212-1122” or “YYYYMMDD-XXXX” in the case of a Swedish example.

Allow participants to resume registration Checking this box allows participants to pick up the registration process from where they left off if they close the web browser, for example. The requirement for this to function are specified, and a participant will need to use the same e-mail address and/or SMS number when they resume.

Use BankID for identity verification This is a Sweden only option, that allows participants to use the e-ID solution BankID to verify their identity. This will only collect the personal information you’ve specified in the Check participant field that should be entered when registering.

Note: BankID is used for collecting participant info like name and personummer, and not for signing anything, like the study consent, even if these are handled in the same process flow. However, using BankID certifies that the user does not register someone else as a participant.

Note: Using BankID for the registration process does not enable BankID login to the participant platform. If you are interested in BankID login contact the BASS support team for help with enabling that functionality.

Allow changing BankID first and last name Checking this option lets participant change the first and last name collected by BankID. This is a niche option, but may be useful if a participant has submitted a name change that has not yet been updated at Skatteverket. Do note however, that first and last names may be changed by an administrator later. Doing so is a much safer route than allowing participants to change BankID first and last name. As with the option above, any BankID-specific options are relevant to Sweden only.

Allow duplicated BankID registrations This allows a participant to register multiple accounts using the same BankID. As with the options above, any BankID-specific options are Sweden only.

Allowed calling code countries This setting specifies which calling code countries are allowed by this project. If you have participant from multiple countries, you have to type each relevant country code here (such as ”se” for Sweden, ”no” for Norway, “dk” for Denmark, “fi” for Finland, ”de” for Germany, ”gb” for the United Kingdom, ”us” for the United States”, etc.) for the SMS features to function correctly.

Registration group This lets you select a previously created group as the default group newly registered participants are placed into. This is mandatory if you want participants to access and complete an assessment as part of their registration. To do this, set the relevant group as the Registration group, and activate an assessment for that group

Hint: Activate the assessment under Participants > the Groups tab, show relevant group > sub-tab Assessments, and set a start date for the relevant assessment in the Date column. The date can be any date before the registration of the first participant.

Hint: The assesment used needs to be managed for Group and not Individual for this to work. See more information on assessments in Chapter 12

Important Note: When using group assessments like this, as part of the registration process, you can generally not rely on reminders as with other assessments. This is because the reminders are based on the activation date of the assessment. Example: If you have three reminders going out every second day, these reminders will all have passed when a new participant registers six months after the registration was opened. Hence it’s good practice to manually check that all newly registered users finish their initial assessment within a reasonable time, and send manual reminders if not (Participant > External messages).

Automatic username This allows you to set an automatic username to be assigned to participant accounts, if the specified conditions are met. This can be either an E-mail address or a custom Participant ID (see below). If you do not wish to have automatic usernames, set this to none.

Note: The participant will not be able to specify a username. If this is set to none, it will be blank, but can be updated later by an administrator. The updated username will need to be manually communicated to the participant.
However, if the study does not include any treatment in BASS and quick login codes are used for assessment notifications, no usernames are needed for the participants.
See Chapter 6 for more information on quick login settings.

Automatic password If you’ve elected to use automatic usernames, you can also use automatic passwords. Simply check the box to tell BASS to automatically generate secure passwords for participants when they register. Both usernames and passwords will be shown to the participant at the end of their registration process. If you have assigned assessments to be completed in conjunction with the registration, the username and password information will be presented to the participant before they start their assessment.

Automatic participant id This lets you use automatic participant IDs, as you specify with the following options. Participant IDs (or “study id”) are useful as a anonymized way to refer to participants, and to sync data within BASS with offline data, should you have it. If you have similar codes for participant in other records outside of BASS, you can tell BASS to use the same syntax for participant IDs.

Automatic participant id prefix This lets you set a prefix for your participant IDs. This can be whatever you choose.

Automatic participant id length This allows you to specify the number of digits following the prefix, or simply the number of digits if you’ve elected not to use prefixes. For example, if you type ”3” into this box, the first participant to register will have the participant ID ”001” assigned to them, the next participant will have ”002”, the next ”003” and so on. If you use automatic prefixes, they will be added to this, such as ”Test001”.

Require study consent Check this box if you wish participant to consent to being part of your study. For participant using the online self-registration the study consent will be a step in the registration process, and the registration process cannot be completed without giving consent. You can edit the content of the study consent further down on this page.

Note: For participants manually created in the administrative view consent will not be collected. If consent should be collected for these participants as well you need to create an instrument and administer it through an assessment to the manually created participants.

Render markdown Check this box if you want BASS to render Study Information, Captcha challenge text, Registration finished text, and Registration closed text using markdown formatting (else only HTML). A guide on how to use Markdown can be found here: https://www.markdownguide.org

Personal identification number validation function This lets you write a JavaScript function to check whether participants adhere to the PID format you’ve presented. If the PID number is incorrect, the function should return a non-empty string with an error message, otherwise it should return the empty string. Upon request, we can supply a function to verify Swedish “personnummer”.

Study information (Markdown/HTML) This text box lets you edit the first page shown when participant click on the registration link. The idea is that you present information on your study here, what it is about, who you are and why you are conducting the study.

Hint: As implied by the heading, you can use Markdown and/or HTML to format your text. Markdown is enabled by checking the Render markdown checkbox above. Best practices is to choose either Markdown or HTML and stick with one of them. Markdown is simpler and quicker to learn and work with. HTML is more complex and requires more effort to learn, but in return gives greater control over how content is displayed. It is very useful to learn at least some HTML if you intend to use BASS for treatments, as the treatment modules are built with Markdown and/or HTML. A good resource for referencing and learning HTML is found here: https://www.w3schools.com.

Below the text box is a button labeled Insert link. Clicking this box opens the file browser for your database in a separate browser tab. From here, you can set up a folder structure for document, images, sound files and videos as well as upload such files to BASS. By clicking an uploaded file, you can insert a file path into the textbox. To turn this file path into a viewable image/video or downloadable file, refer to either Markdown or HTML as appropriate. More information on this can be found under the Treatments section in Chapter 13.5.

Captcha challenge text (Markdown/HTML) This text box lets you edit an optional text to be shown in conjunction with the captcha challenge. The captcha challenge already includes instructions by default, but if you want to add additional information you have the option to do so here.

Study consent (Markdown) If you’ve elected to use study consent (by checking the corresponding checkbox above), this text box is where you edit the consent form. As stated under the header, users will be required to check any checkboxes you put in here (using HTML). To set up a checkbox, use the <input type=”checkbox”> tag. For more information on checkboxes, see the following link: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_input_type_checkbox.asp.

Registration finished text (Markdown/HTML) This textbox lets you type a text or message that is shown to participants when they have completed their registration. As stated under the header, this message is only shown if there are no assessments pending, i.e if you’ve set an assessment to be completed by participants in conjunction with the registration process (as describes under ”registration group”), this message will NOT be shown.

Registration closed text (Markdown/HTML) As stated under the header, the message or text you type in this box will only be shown when the registration is closed, i.e if you have unchecked the Registration possible checkbox at the top of the page.