The study lifecycle
A study moves through four stages: Setup, Launch, Rounds, and Completion. Review & launch is the last screen of Setup, not a separate stage. Archive follows completion and is not a fifth stage. Recruitment runs alongside the rounds. Reporting is available during the study and after completion.
Creating a draft, launching, sending an invitation, and opening a round are different actions. None of them does the work of the next one. Consensus does not complete the study by itself.
Who acts
The principal investigator launches, approves a round, completes the study, and can download the study audit. A coordinator can open or close collection after that approval. The schedule can open an already approved round only when the two Setup settings named under Rounds are both on. A person who can edit Results uses Compute results. Panelists answer through their own link. They do not launch, approve a round, or confirm a disposition.
The biostatistics role confirms rule-determined dispositions. The steering committee confirms escalated ones. When separation of duties is on, the principal investigator confirms neither. The seat list is on Roles and access.
1. Setup
Create draft study saves a draft and records you as the principal investigator. It does not launch the study, queue an invitation, or copy people or responses from another study.
New study has three tabs: Study workflows, Our templates, and Past studies. The workflow cards are Rate existing items, Generate items, then rate, Define and refine, then rate, and Build a custom workflow. A template file is imported into the template library first. It is not a fourth way to create the draft on that form. The steps are in Start a new study. A first walkthrough is Run your first study. This page does not repeat it.
Setup is eleven screens. Ten of them count toward ready. Review & launch is the eleventh screen and is not one of the ten.
| Group | Ready steps | What is decided |
|---|---|---|
| Study design | 1 Identity, 2 Method | Who runs the study, its ethics review and data governance, the method framework and the classification structure |
| Panel design | 3 Eligibility, 4 Size & mix, 5 Profile & integrity | Inclusion and exclusion criteria, screening, panel targets and groups, the profile questions panelists answer |
| Round design | 6 Item bank, 7 Rating & consensus, 8 Rounds & feedback | The statements, the rating scale and consensus rules, the round plan and what feedback panelists see |
| Governance | 9 Consent & comms, 10 Analysis plan | The consent form, email wording and cadence, the anonymity and reporting commitments |
The screen words are Ready, Needs attention, Blocks launch, Required later, and Not started. Needs attention still counts as ready. Blocks launch, Required later, and Not started do not.
Method, study identity, the rating rules, and the analysis plan are launch errors until they are confirmed. A material change withdraws the Method confirmation, the rating-rules confirmation, and the analysis-plan confirmation. An edit on Study identity does not. Those fields are administrative, and the screen says the confirmation stays. Unconfirmed identity is still the launch error "Confirm the study identity before launch." You can press Withdraw confirmation. Retention and the withdrawal terms are warnings for launch. Both must be confirmed before the consent form can be published.
Each step is saved on the server. If someone else saved the same section since you opened it, your save is refused rather than merged.
2. Review & launch
Review & launch lists every screen. A Study team error blocks launch and is not one of the ten ready steps. A Study team warning does not. An empty round plan blocks launch. Counted groups that cannot meet the Round 1 group check do not by themselves turn Launch study off. Launch is refused until that acknowledgement is recorded.
The heading is Launch this study. The button is Launch study. The dialog is "Launch this study?" The confirm control is Launch. Only the principal investigator can launch, because Setup edit belongs to that role.
Launch creates the planned rounds and marks the study Active. Round 1 is created in Building. Later rounds start Planned. Launch sends no invitation and does not open a round. A second launch is refused.
What freezes at launch, and which later changes are amendments, is the governed study record. This page does not keep a second list. The scale cannot be amended.
3. Recruitment and consent
No invitation can be queued until a consent version is published. A published version is a frozen row. A new version is a new row. You confirm each batch. A batch holds at most 50 invitations. Queuing a batch is not the same as delivering it.
Accepting an invitation, giving consent, and enrollment are separate records. Consent before enrollment is required only when the study says so. The staff control is Enroll. The check the server makes when consent is saved does not itself compare every consent-wording field. That limit is an open product question.
Invitation and consent is what the panelist sees. It is not the staff procedure.
Once someone is enrolled, staff see a pseudonym until a name is opened through an audited reveal, with a reason.
4. Rounds
The round badges are Planned, Building, Open, Reviewing, Decision, and Closed.
| State | What happens |
|---|---|
| Planned | The round exists in the plan and has not been prepared. Later rounds start here. |
| Building | Content and schedule are prepared. Round 1 is created here. The principal investigator uses Approve this round. |
| Open | Panelists answer through their personal link. |
| Reviewing | Collection has closed. Results are not computed by that close. |
| Decision | Confirmed dispositions are recorded. |
| Closed | The round is finished and the next one can be prepared. |
Approve this round is the principal investigator's decision. It is bound to the round's content, its rules, the consent version, and the schedule. For a later rating round it is also bound to the feedback it was approved against. A relevant change makes the approval stale. There is no automatic approval.
Opening is separate. The principal investigator or a coordinator uses Open this round and Close collection. The schedule can open an already approved round only when both "Open approved rounds on their own at the scheduled time" and "On the scheduled date" are set, and the approval is still valid. Otherwise a person opens it.
Closing collection does not compute results. A person who can edit Results uses Compute results, and only after collection has closed. Compute results calculates the study's rule outcomes. It does not calculate statistical stability or a subgroup comparison.
After the deadline plus any grace, the panelist page says the round closed on that date. A late save is refused with "The deadline for this round has passed, so responses are no longer taken." A round with no deadline stays open until someone closes it.
Advance, Revise, and Hold are dispositions. They are not the calculated classes. While another round exists, Uncertain, Polarized, Group disagreement, and Too few responses are shown as Rated again, and the disposition is Advance. Revise is the clarity choice Reword it. On the last planned round, an unsettled percent-rule statement is Final: no consensus. A clarity keep-or-reword with no round left is Final: deferred, still unclear. The five final labels are Final: retained, Final: excluded, Final: retired, Final: no consensus, and Final: deferred, still unclear. The class and disposition tables are on Interpreting results.
From a later rating round, when the wording is unchanged, panelists can see the group median, the middle half of the ratings, and the share in each zone. The switches are Show the group median, Show the IQR, and Show the percent who agree. They can see their own earlier rating when Show the panelist's own earlier rating is on, and comments the team chose to share when Show comments is on. A reword shows none of the earlier figures, not the earlier rating, and not those comments. The live block has no histogram, no mean, and no standard deviation. Show a histogram is a Setup switch. The histogram appears in the Setup preview, not in the live block. Stability is not calculated.
A statement answered by fewer people than the analysis plan's smallest reportable group is not deleted. On Results and in the consensus file it can appear as Withheld. On feedback, the group numbers are not shown. The responses file omits that statement rather than labeling it Withheld. On a withheld feedback row the chosen comments are omitted. The person's own earlier rating can still show.
When to stop
Rating & consensus can hold stopping advice. A new study starts with advice to consider a stop at 90 percent of statements settled, meaning retained or excluded. The screen says this is advice only. It is not a standard. It does not add a round, close a round, or complete the study.
A further rating round is a principal-investigator amendment after the last round's decisions are confirmed. The new round is still prepared, approved, and opened on its own. That amendment is described on the governed study record.
5. Reporting
Reporting is open to the roles that can read results, during the study and after it. The consensus, participation, and responses files omit panelist names, email addresses, and comment text. The responses file uses a pseudonym, says whether a comment was given, and includes statement text. The summary is not counts only. It can include the study name, round states, report settings, and amendment reasons. The outline is one spreadsheet row.
Not every download is nameless. Two principal-investigator downloads can contain names and email addresses: the identifiable panelist list and the results-request file. Whether identity and research records stay fully separate is an open product question. The study audit export is a separate principal-investigator file. It is not one of those two downloads.
The product does not produce a PDF, a Word file, a REFI-QDA export, a qualitative archive, a checksummed bundle, or a codebook download.
6. Completion
When every round is finalized, the principal investigator completes the study. The button is Complete this study…. The heading is "Complete this study now?" The confirm control is Yes, complete the study. Completing is one-way. The research record becomes read-only. Reporting, the study audit, and requests to withdraw or remove answers stay open. The task is Completion and retention.
Archive this study… follows completion. It leaves the active lists, deletes nothing, and cannot be undone. Nothing is deleted automatically. Deletion is a request. Another principal investigator decides it when one exists. A sole principal investigator may decide their own request, and the record says the decision was not separated from the request.
Study status
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | In Setup, not launched |
| Active | Launched. Recruitment and rounds are under way |
| Completed | Completed by the principal investigator. The research record is read-only |
| Archived | Completed, then moved out of the active lists. Nothing was deleted |
See Home and studies for how studies are listed.