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The government, for most countries, is the largest funding source for clinical research. The second group of research grants comes from the corporate world. Unfortunately, the worlds of corporate greed and academia advancement rarely align in research. Therefore many universities form an educational cooperative to develop coordinated research studies. And if these cooperatives are highly successful, then the research tools are released for use. One such tool is REDCap, further details can be found at www.project-redcap.org .
Dans la plupart des pays, c'est le gouvernement qui assure la plus importante source de financement en recherche fondamentale.
REDCap stands for Research Electronic Data Capture. It is an interesting tool that can be used for database management and online surveys. REDCap is used in over 100 countries by 2000+ institutions. It is free to use, but it does not qualify under the free and open software since the software license bars corporate use.
Vanderbilt University developed REDCap using government grants. The goal of this project was to reduce the lag time for biomedical researchers in developing translational meta-databases. Vanderbilt is the only validated distributor. Most internet enabled devices can use this software. A university signs up, and an administrator is assigned. This administrator will be the onsite help desk.
The program is well documented across numerous educational facilities. The homepage can be quite daunting. The first option is to choose the project type: database or survey. The interface for both projects looks about the same. You can import outside data sets into REDCap to develop databases.
I personally have no experience on the database development. I only experienced the survey side data management. I began developing surveys to incorporate into some of my proctored classes. The main purpose of these surveys is to automate functions of my job. These surveys capture basic data.
The survey development is done in two sequential segments: development and production. In the first portion, it is a testing mode. It is here where you can see the basic survey outline. There are numerous fields to enter for a simple question. Once the fields are completely entered, the survey is then enabled with a simple online website link created at the end. The survey is then shifted into the last stage, production. Once the survey is in production, it is impossible to change.
You have to translate the survey back to development to make changes. The final surveys look sharp and professional for the end user. The surveys can be sent at once to selected emails. Each survey can be set for entry once the link is entered. Plus the link can be a single or multiple use admission.
When the study is over, the results can be downloaded into a simple spreadsheet. However the consistent complaint is that REDCap is quite rigid in the workflow. It is hard to relate Survey A to Survey B. Therefore, many REDCap Researchers perform strong testing during the developmental mode. If the survey is poorly constructed, then poor data is collected. Despite this fact, REDCap is a great research tool.