Database Search
How to and tips for optimized searches in Filemaker for study specific recruitment.
In household view, press the find button (magnifying glass) at the top of the page. Once pressed, you should see a blank page with all fields empty.
Fill in fields with specific details (will vary depending on study and what you are looking for). Fields to enter for an optimized search:
Days since last contact
If you are contacting that same day, mark the "days since last contact" in the top right corner as: >59. We cannot contact families that have been contacted less than 60 days ago.
If you are creating a list of families to contact and plan to go through it over a period of time, you can modify the number you write in "days since last contact" (e.g., you'll be making calls for a month, so families that were contacted 40 days ago will be accessible in 20 days)
Birth Date (age range)
Here, you will enter the range of possible birthdates your participants can have, based on the study specific age requirements
Example: The current date is July 4 2024 and you want to look up children who are between 1 and 2 years old. In the birth date entry you would write: 7/4/2022...7/4/2023 (Format is always MM/DD/YYYY...MM/DD/YYYY).
Again, if you will be recruiting over a longer period of time, you can also extend the age range to include children who will age into the study during the recruitment period, even if they may not be currently eligible.
Other details you may add include: Notes, Potential Studies (see section "Tagging Studies" below)
Example for Notes: "bilingual", "trilingual", "premature", "low birthweight" etc. (However, not all household note sections are detailed and often lack child specific info. Use this as a supplementary search method, as you will always need to go into child info to get all available information.)
Once you are done filling in the necessary information, press "Perform Find", same button as before.
When you are going through the list of selected households, make sure to pay attention to the Notes section and the top right bar which indicates if a family can or cannot be contacted. Do not call families with "Don't Call" or "Out of Service".
Tagging Studies
In Household view, there is a section towards the top right labeled Potential Studies. This is where you can indicate which study a child is currently, or soon to be, eligible for. Make sure you use consistent spelling for a particular study. Later on, once you have labeled all eligible participants, you may quick search only these children by indicating the particular study in Potential Studies when you are performing a find. You can add or delete participants to a potential study at any time.
Tips:
It is useful to generate your own list outside of the database to identify eligible participants you wish to contact. In case anything gets deleted, you have a record of that participant. Make sure you do not use any personal information like phone numbers or emails.
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