Before submitting your changes, you should first view your changes and any possible impacts to your data with the “View detailed summary of drafted changes” link.
It is best practice to review this page to make sure that all drafted changes are anticipated and approved by any relevant team members. You should not submit changes if you are not sure who drafted them or why they were drafted.
Red text or buttons on this page indicates significant and potentially harmful changes identified by the system.
In particular, you should review the "Details regarding all changes made in Draft Mode" section.
The system will summarize the total number of critical issues identified in your drafted changes. Then, the remaining list will break those critical issues into 3 subsections.
Click one of the options below to visit the relevant section:
Deleted fields
When the system detects "Deleted fields that contain data", you can review the bolded sections titled "Fields to be DELETED" and "Forms to be DELETED" sections pictured below.
This section will display the field name/form name, a summary of the field label, and the number of records/events affected. For checkbox fields, the number of records affected will count each box that is checked for a single record as 1 record. For example, if one record has 4 boxes selected for the "race" field, then the page will display "(4 records/events affected).
Modified fields
If the system detects "Potentially critical issues in modified fields that contain data", you can review the bolded section titled "Below is a listing of the changes to be committed to this project." Please also review the key for the comparison table, pictured below.
Look for red text in the table of changes displayed on the page. In this section, we explain each of the possible warnings you will see on this page to help you understand how the change will impact your project.
Possible label mismatch because of label changes
REDCap stores the data for structured field types (such as radio, dropdown, checkbox, yes/no, true/false, and slider fields) as raw values rather than response labels. This means that changing the labels of existing response options after you have started collecting data may impact the meaning of that data.
You will find this warning under the "Choices or Calculations" column.
Click "Compare" to review the current raw values/response choices and the drafted changes to these options. A pop-up will appear that is titled "Choices Change Summary."
In the example above, the drafted change would make existing "2, Pennsylvania" responses appear as "2, South Carolina." This is a result of replacing an existing response choice with another response choice of the same raw value. New response choices should be given new raw values. For example, adding "5, South Carolina" as an option to this list would avoid this issue. The raw values you assign in your response choice list do not control the order of the list, so you may place them in any order, as long as the raw value assigned to the response option is the same. If you wanted the options in this example to be listed alphabetically, you can change the order like you will see below.
4, California
1, Colorado
3, New Hampshire
2, Pennsylvania
If you wish to no longer display a response option, but you want to retain the data, you may wish to consider hiding the option instead.
| Related article: | How do I hide a response option? |
Data MIGHT be lost due to deleted choice(s)
If you delete a response option after you have started collecting data, you will lose the data associated with that response option.
You will find this warning under the "Choices or Calculations" column.
Click "Compare" to review the current raw values/response choices and the drafted changes to these options. A pop-up will appear that is titled "Choices Change Summary."
In the example above, the drafted change would delete "2, Pennsylvania" responses. This is the result of erasing this response option in Designer.
If you wish to no longer display a response option, but you want to retain the data, you may wish to consider hiding the option instead.
| Related article: | How do I hide a response option? |
Possible data loss if field type changes
Some field types are not directly compatible with one another. For example, while radio buttons can be changed to dropdowns without issue, changing a radio button to a descriptive field would result in data loss since descriptive fields cannot store data.
You will find this warning under the "Field Type" column.
In this example, you can see the current value (in grey) compared to the new drafted value (in black).
The field is drafted to be changed from a radio button field type to a descriptive field type, which will result in data loss.
If you're not sure why your field types are not directly compatible, please submit a ticket.
Deleted or moved descriptive field for an e-Consent form
With the introduction of the e-Consent Framework 2.0, projects that are leveraging the new versioning system will have a descriptive field that is dedicated to containing consent content.
If that field is deleted or moved, all consent content from that field will be removed, impacting both existing and future consents.
To add a new version of that consent, you can select +Add consent form in your e-Consent settings:
| Related article: | e-Consent Framework |