Activity Groups for Diary Studies

Decode now introduces Activity Groups, a new framework for scheduled, multi-stage research, with Diary Studies as the first implementation built on it. Unlike a traditional study where a participant completes everything in one sitting, Diary Studies let researchers engage with the same participants across multiple days or weeks, scheduling activities to capture how experiences, behaviours, and opinions change over time.

Researchers can now create multiple Activity Groups within a single Diary Study, with each one representing a specific stage or milestone in the participant's journey — for example, a 14-day product usage study might include separate activities for Day 1 Initial Impressions, Day 7 Product Usage Experience, and Day 14 Final Reflections. Each Activity Group can contain one or more existing Decode blocks, so Video Response, Image Response, Text Response, Multiple Choice, Likert Scale, Ranking, and other blocks can all be combined based on what a study needs. Researchers can also configure how and when each activity should be completed, with recurrence options like One Time, Daily, Weekly, or Every N Days, along with duration, due times, required entries, and late submission preferences. Sharing has been extended to Diary Studies too, so researchers can share individual activities via dedicated links and QR codes, or share the entire study at once, letting participants progress through activities according to the configured schedule.