Moving Averages are changing values over time that need to be tracked and used to perform some other action. Think of it like a super external variable.
For example, if a diary is getting entered by Participants, a score on each diary needs to get averaged (per Participant). Once that average reaches a specified value, the diary should stop itself from getting deployed to that Participant.
Prerequisite to access moving average definitions
User has access to form builder
Moving average configuration is accessed from within the External Variables screen.
Web browser:
Mobile app:
The parameters to define are as follows:
Form and field - Identify which field needs to be tracked over time (should be number-based field)
Prior Records - How many of the latest records should be averaged together. For example, above is averaging the last 5 records that have been entered for each subject
Interval diary to terminate - Which diary should get stopped based on the defined value being reached. Currently this is the only action available to perform based on the moving average. Others may be added in the future.
Terminate if less than or equal to - The value that will determine if the action (terminating the diary) should be performed. In the current model, it assumes an average value starts high and decreases over time.
Exporting the results of moving averages
As forms in the study get saved, the moving average is computed on the fly in order to accomplish some action, such as terminating a diary schedule. To see the values that are getting computed over time, the data can be exported to a report:
When viewing the export it is important to know how the computation is configured. For example, the average shown above is computing the pior 3 records, so each row of data seen in the exported file is the average of the prior 3 values.