The Diary / EMA layout adds high-frequency repeated-measures surveys to CheckTick: short surveys triggered on a fixed schedule (daily, 4×/day) or by events (symptom onset). Used for pain diaries, mood tracking, medication adherence, and symptom monitoring in clinical trials.

This guide covers the creator workflow and the participant experience. For the technical data model and runtime pipeline, see Survey Layouts (Technical).

When to use Diary / EMA

  • Pain diaries — daily or multiple-times-daily pain ratings over a study period.
  • Mood tracking — IAPT/mental-health monitoring with repeated PHQ-9 or GAD-7 administrations.
  • Medication adherence — daily check-ins confirming medication was taken, with optional side-effect reporting.
  • Symptom monitoring in clinical trials — high-frequency symptom tracking with compliance tracking for regulatory submissions.

Diary / EMA is different from Staged (which is phase-based: baseline → 2-week → 6-month). Diaries are high-frequency repeated measures with burst scheduling, compliance tracking (missed entries), and time-stamp integrity for regulatory submissions. The scheduling semantics are fundamentally different from phase windows.

Creator workflow

1. Build your sections

Build your survey sections in the Builder as you would for any survey. A diary survey typically has a single section with a small number of questions — the "instrument" that the participant completes each time a window opens.

2. Switch to the Diary layout

Go to the Organise page (/surveys/<slug>/groups/). In the Survey layout section at the top, click Use this layout on the Diary (EMA) card.

A configuration card appears below the layout picker.

3. Configure the schedule

The configuration card has:

  • Schedule type — how diary windows are scheduled:
  • Fixed interval — windows open at regular intervals (e.g. every 6 hours = 4×/day). Set the interval in hours.
  • Event-triggered — no scheduled windows. The participant initiates entries from the landing page (e.g. "I had a symptom"). Compliance is not schedule-tracked.
  • Burst — cycles of on-days (daily entries) followed by off-days (no entries). Set the on-days and off-days (e.g. 7 days on, 7 days off).
  • Window times measured from — Participant enrolment (each participant's windows start from their first access) or Survey open date (all participants on the same calendar schedule). Use Survey open date when you want everyone on the same schedule.
  • Compliance threshold (%) — warn on the compliance dashboard if a participant submits fewer than this percentage of expected entries.
  • Grace period (minutes) — a window stays submittable for this many minutes after its scheduled end. Prevents edge-case missed entries when the participant is a few minutes late.
  • Show participants their compliance summary — displays the compliance stats on the diary landing page.
  • Intro / landing content block — an optional content block (welcome text, consent, privacy notice) rendered above the diary landing page. Select from content block questions in this survey.

Click Save configuration when done.

4. Publish and run

  1. Publish the survey as you would for any survey.
  2. Participants access the survey and are enrolled automatically on first access (their enrolment time becomes the anchor for window calculations, if using the enrolment anchor).
  3. Each time a window opens, the participant sees the diary landing page with a "Start this entry" button. They complete the short instrument and submit.
  4. If no window is open, the participant sees a "No diary window open right now" page with the next window time.

5. Monitor compliance

The survey dashboard shows a Diary Compliance table with per-participant stats:

  • Expected — how many entries should have been submitted by now.
  • Submitted — how many entries the participant has completed.
  • Missed — how many windows closed without a submission.
  • Compliance — submitted / expected × 100.

Rows below the compliance threshold are highlighted. Click Export CSV to download the full DiaryEntry audit trail (participant, window order, expected start/end, submitted at, missed) — suitable for regulatory submissions and data monitoring committee reports.

Participant experience

First access

When a participant first accesses a diary survey:

  1. Their enrolment time is recorded (used as the anchor for window calculations when the anchor is set to Participant enrolment).
  2. The diary landing page shows the current window status and a "Start this entry" button (if a window is open).

Between windows

When no window is open (e.g. between fixed-interval windows, or during a burst off-period):

  1. The participant sees a "No diary window open right now" page.
  2. The next window time is shown if available.
  3. Their progress is preserved so resume works when the next window opens.

Completing an entry

  1. The participant clicks "Start this entry" on the landing page.
  2. The entry form renders — all sections in the survey (a diary entry uses the full group set each time).
  3. The participant completes the questions and submits.
  4. The entry is marked as submitted with a timestamp.
  5. The participant is redirected to the thank-you page.

Save and resume

Save-and-resume works as it does for any survey. The participant's enrolment anchor is preserved across resume. If the window has closed while they were away, the entry is marked as missed on their next access.

Reminder emails

When a new window opens, participants who have not yet submitted receive a reminder email containing the survey name, a link to the survey, and the window end time. No survey content or answers are included in the email. Reminders are sent by a daily scheduled command (process_diary_reminders).

Outline syntax

The Diary layout can be configured directly in the Outline / bulk upload text editor using a DIARY block. The grammar is optional (the Organise page UI is the primary config path) but useful for the AI builder and power users.

DIARY
  schedule: fixed_interval
  interval_hours: 6
  anchor: enrolment
  compliance_threshold: 80
  grace_minutes: 30
  show_progress: true

# Daily check-in {daily-check-in}
## Pain level {pain}
(likert) 1-5

## Mood {mood}
(likert) 1-5

## Notes {notes}
(long_text)
  • The DIARY block configures the schedule. No per-group ~ suffixes are needed because a diary entry uses the full group set.
  • For burst schedules, use burst_on_days and burst_off_days instead of interval_hours.
  • For event_triggered, omit interval_hours; the participant initiates entries from the landing page.
  • The grammar round-trips through export → import like the other layouts.

Preview

On the preview page, a Diary / EMA preview panel shows the schedule type, anchor, and interval/burst config so you can verify the schedule at a glance. The preview renders all questions (a diary entry uses the full group set).

Survey Map

The Survey Map shows the full authored survey. No per-group badges (unlike Staged phases / Delphi rounds) — every group is in every entry.

Warnings

The Organise page surfaces non-blocking warnings for common misconfigurations:

  • Fixed interval with no interval set — enter the hours between windows (e.g. 6 for 4×/day).
  • Burst with no on-days — enter the number of on-days in each cycle.
  • Survey open anchor with no start date — set a start date or switch the anchor to Participant enrolment.
  • Branching targets a diary section — branching across diary entries has no effect.