Studies

A study is a tenant-owned, time-boxed research project — for example, a 10-week protocol — that delivers scheduled questionnaires to enrolled participants and measures how reliably they respond.

What a study is

A study is defined by a name, a description, a duration in weeks, and the language or languages it is authored in. Each study is either active or inactive, which controls whether new participants can take part.

Once participants begin enrolling, a study’s questionnaires lock so that the data collected stays comparable across everyone. To change the questions or schedule after that point, you clone the study into a new one and enroll new participants there.

Participant groups (arms)

A participant group is a named subset of participants, such as “Microdosing / Female”. Groups are the targeting unit of a study: every questionnaire is assigned to one or more groups.

Each participant joins exactly one group, and that membership is fixed for the duration of the study. This lets you deliver different questionnaires to different arms while keeping each person’s path consistent.

Questionnaires and their kinds

Questions are organized into questionnaires, which are built on the platform’s survey structure. Each questionnaire has a kind that determines when it is delivered:

Baseline — Delivered once, at the start of the study.
Recurring — A repeating prompt on a cadence: daily, on specific weekdays, or every X days, at set times.
Final assessment — Delivered once, at the end of the study.

A recurring questionnaire has a completion window. By default this runs until the end of the participant’s local day, after which the prompt is recorded as missed.

Scheduling anchored to each participant’s start date

Day 1 is the day a participant joins the study. All recurring prompts and the end-of-study point are calculated from that personal start date, in the participant’s own timezone.

This means two people who join a week apart receive the same sequence of prompts, simply offset by a week. Prompts arrive as phone notifications, following the same scheduling and reminder model as routines.

Study duration and the end-of-study assessment

A study runs for a fixed number of weeks per participant, counted from that participant’s start date. Each person reaches the end at their own time.

At the end of the study, recurring prompts stop and the final assessment unlocks. Completing the final assessment marks that participant’s participation as complete.

What adherence means

Adherence measures how reliably a participant answered the prompts they were scheduled to receive — completed prompts compared against scheduled ones. It can be monitored live, not only at the end of the study.

For every prompt, the platform records whether it was delivered, opened, and completed. This distinguishes between several outcomes:

Completed — The participant answered the prompt.
Skipped — The participant chose not to answer.
Never delivered — The prompt was not sent.
Delivered but unanswered — The prompt arrived but the window closed without an answer.
Not applicable — The prompt was hidden by branching logic and not expected.
Missed — The completion window passed with no response.

A participant receives an access code that already carries their study and group. They enter this code in the mobile app to create their account and enroll.

Before participation becomes active, the participant must have signed all of the workspace’s active documents — there is no separate study-specific consent form, so consent reuses the workspace’s existing document set (such as a consent form or participant information sheet). The schedule only begins once every active document is signed; a participant who has already signed them all enrolls into an active study immediately. A participant can take part in a given study only once. For how consent records and data are kept, see Data retention and privacy.

How withdrawal works

Participation can end early. A participant can withdraw in the mobile app, and a research partner can withdraw a participant through an integration.

Withdrawal stops all future prompts but does not delete answers already collected. Withdrawal is distinct from a full data-erasure request, which removes a person’s data entirely. See Data retention and privacy for the difference.

Who can run studies

Studies are gated per workspace. The feature is off by default on Starter, and on by default for Growth and Bespoke.

When disabled, all study features are hidden. Contact your Afterglow representative to enable it for your workspace.

Studies in the Backoffice — Where studies, groups, and questionnaires are managed.
Studies in the mobile app — How participants enroll and respond.
Content structure — How questionnaires and questions are built.
Routines — The scheduling and reminder model studies share.
Data retention and privacy — Consent, withdrawal, and data erasure.