Millisecond Forums

subject id & data columns in output

https://forums.millisecond.com/Topic16188.aspx

By GeroLange - 4/29/2015

Dear all,
after hours of clicking and scrawling through fora, Inquisit help and web, I fear that I have to bother you guys with three questions that I could not find an answer to ... .
1) Is there any possibility to determine the format of a subject ID (such as, e.g., 'must have 3 digits' or 'only numbers') ?
2) Could the 'Group id' be renamed to, e.g., 'Testday' in the prompt and in the data file ?
3) So far I have not restricted the number of column that Inquisit produces in the output, though it produces quite a lot of colomns in my experiment. Is there any way to change (some of) these column headers to something more sensible ?
I hope that it is clear what I mean and that one of you has answers ;-)

Thanks a lot in advance,
Gero
By Dave - 4/29/2015

> 1) Is there any possibility to determine the format of a subject ID (such as, e.g., 'must have 3 digits' or 'only numbers') ?

When running a script via Inquisit Web: Yes, you can enforce that via the launch page's configuration.
When running a script in Inquisit Lab: No, you cannot restrict the input in the id prompt. You can, however, have your script check the id and reject any that fail to meet your criteria.

> 2) Could the 'Group id' be renamed to, e.g., 'Testday' in the prompt and in the data file ?

The prompt in Inquisit Lab cannot be edited, no. As for the data output, you can store script.groupid in a variable name to your liking and log that variable to the data file:

<values>
/ testday = 0
</values>

<expt>
/ onexptbegin = [values.testday = script.groupid]
...
</expt>

<data>
/ columns = [date time subject values.testday ...]
</data>

> 3) So far I have not restricted the number of column that Inquisit produces in the output, though it produces quite a lot of
> colomns in my experiment. Is there any way to change (some of) these column headers to something more sensible ?

No, you cannot change the default column names. You can create variables (i.e., <values> entries) named according to your preferences, store the properties of interest in those variables and log the variables to the data file instead of using the default data recording scheme (which you will find documented in the language reference for the /columns attribute).

This is essentially the same thing as in #2 above. Suppose you don't like the default column name 'latency' and would rather call it 'rt'. Then you'd do

<values>
/ rt = -1
</values>

<block myblock>
/ trials = [1-10=noreplace(a,b)]
</block>

<trial a>
/ ontrialend = [values.rt = trial.a.latency]
/ stimulusframes = [1=mytext]
/ validresponse = (57)
</trial>

<trial b>
/ ontrialend = [values.rt = trial.b.latency]
/ stimulusframes = [1=mytext]
/ validresponse = (57)
</trial>

<text mytext>
/ items = ("Press the spacebar as quickly as possible")
</text>

<data>
/ columns = [date time subject trialnum trialcode response values.rt]
</data>