When using GemsTracker, it helps to understand the meaning assigned to the following terms.

An answer is a single answer to a single question in a filled-in survey, coupled to a respondent through a token.

Groups are security elements that are used to assign page access rights to groups of users. Groups are also used to assign surveys to certain users; e.g. to respondents or general care staff.

A commonly used alternative name for respondents.

Question means a question asked in a survey.

Questions usually have a code name. These code names can be used e.g. to perform calculations on the answers to a survey after answering. E.g. when a survey has questions with the code names WEIGHT, HEIGHT and BMI, then the BMI Calculation Event can be used to automatically calculate the BMI after a survey has been answered.

A reception code is e.g. OK or an error code that signals that all is well or e.g. that a respondent is no longer participating, a track is stopped or a token should not be answered or was answered incorrectly.

A reception has a success code of true or false. By default OK is the only reception code with a success code set to true, but more success codes can be created. A survey needs to have a success code for a token, the track the token belongs to and the respondent the track belongs to in order to be answerable by a respondent or a staff member.

Alternative name for a reception code for a respondent.

Respondents are people about whom or for whom surveys must be answered.

A results is the answer to a single question in a survey, that is deemed to be the result of that survey. These results are stored in GemsTracker for quick display of these results

A round is the use of a survey within a track. A single survey can be presented to the respondent over many rounds, or just once, or not.

In a track with multiple rounds you can specify how the date when a survey should be taken depends on a date from a previous round. The dates used can be an answer to a previous question or a the date that survey was answered, but also e.g. the date when that survey could be answered. you can specify the number of hours, days, weeks, months, etc. to add or subtract to that date.

A source is a source of surveys and answers to those surveys, e.g. a Lime Survey Installation containing one or more surveys.

Staff members are users that can login in GemsTracker and can have special rights to edit and change respondents, answer surveys or change parts of the setup. Typically they can include health care professionals, administrators, data managers, researchers and security auditors.

A survey is a questionnaire in Lime Survey or some other survey source. Surveys are assigned to respondents using one or more rounds in a track.

See round.

A track contains one or more rounds of surveys.

Respondents are assigned to tracks manually by the users or through code written specifically for a project.

A token is an identification relating a single respondent to a single survey instance for a single round in a track assigned to that respondent.

Tokens have valid from and optional valid until dates that define the period in which that survey can be answered for that respondent. These dates can be edited manually through the interface, but are usually determined by calculation rules set for the token's round in the track editor, specifying the valid from date e.g. through a date answer to an earlier survey in the track or through the valid from or until date of an earlier token or using some other date.