Creating an Automated Subject Variable

To avoid the necessity of tracking and entering unique identifiers, you can create a Calculated Subject ID. To do this, create an Automatic Variable named SUBJECT that is calculated through the concatenation (linking together) of Today’s Date and Today’s Time:

1. Create an Automatic Variable called TODAY, of type Today’s Date.
2. Create an Automatic Variable called TIME, of type Current Time.
3. Create an Automatic Variable called SUBJECT, of type String Expression.
4. Enter the following into the Numeric Calculation/String Expression box:

CONCAT(TODAY,TIME)

This technique can also be used to concatenate other variables (e.g., month of birth, last 4 digits of SSN, gender).