Defining and Supporting Online Studies And Randomized Controlled Trials

Velian Pandeliev, Steve Tsourounis, Hubert Hu, Kante Easley, Ron Baecker

18 October, 2014

• Tangra is a web portal that provides an interface for participants and investigators in online studies

• Tangra runs on the Django web application framework

• Tangra can be used by researchers with only basic web programming knowledge

• The Tangra backend can be used to collect data from third-party apps on a wide variety of platforms and devices

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Tangra 1.0. - Mental Fitness• Conceived as a Master's project in 2010

• Validation pilot study with 15 seniors who played one of two sets of online mental fitness games was reported at GRAND 2011

• End users reported the portal was intuitive and easy to use

• Tangra was able to guide participants through a sequence of stages (e.g. informed consent, intervention, debriefing) entirely online.

• The implementation was fairly narrow and depended heavily on intimate knowledge of Django

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Tangra 1.0. Screenshot

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Tangra 2.0.• Tangra currently supports defining any study that

consists of consecutive stages using simple XML configuration files

• The order of stages can be defined separately for different groups of users (e.g., RCT studies, Latin square designs, control-treatment studies)

• A public API enables third party apps on a variety of platforms (Web, desktop, Android, iOS) to interface with the core Tangra system. The API includes documentation and working examples.

• Tangra has a video conferencing plugin that enables interviews to be conducted within the portal.

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Use Cases

• Eminent neuropsychologist Prof. Yaakov Stern is using Tangra with a video game called SpaceFortress to investigate the effects of mental and aerobic exercise on cognition in healthy elders.

• Kante Easley et al. deployed an online survey with Tangra. It identified the strengths and drawbacks of a community’s built environment in supporting the health and wellness of community members.

• Velian Pandeliev is using Tangra as part of his Ph.D. research in a diary study of academic reading habits. The study will help identify the technology habits and requirements of active reading in CS.

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Tangra Features

• Easy setup of studies including users, groups, conditions and interventions using XML.

• Well-documented public API for collecting and accessing participant data.

• Clean and mobile-friendly investigator and participant interfaces.

• Data logging and management from any third party app that can send AJAX POST requests.

• Available to collaborators.

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