Millisecond Forums

Hi Penny,

You can do that with the batch element. It allows to run a group of Inquisit scripts in a sequence (you will find some details in the Inqusit help). All you have to do is to program two experiments, one for the IAT and another for your demographics, and than put them together in a new batch than might look like this:


batch
/ file = "IAT.exp"
/ file = "demographics.exp"
batch

(Before and after "batch" insert those arrows, they disappear on this page)

When you start the batch, just make sure that all other files (i.e. your IAT.exp and the demographic.exp) are located in the same folder as you new batch.exp. The subject ID will be carried over from one experiment to the other.

Bye, Mia

I have a related question. I want to do the exact same thing: an IAT-script followed by a demographic survey. However i want to adminstrate it online. Will a similar batch-command work in the web-version? I was under the impression that only registered .exp will record data It would be absurd if it would require multiple licenses to utilize the survey function in this manner. In that case i will stick with old (not so quite so nice) soloutions that worked in inquisit 2 (e.g. likerts in the same script).

Yes, you can run multiple scripts using the batch element with Inquisit web edition. The script file that you should register is the one containing the <batch> element (not the ones with IAT or survey).

-Sean

That's great! But I wonder how I should go about so that I can easily identify and pair up the two .dat-files that are produced.  I will sometimes for ease of admininstration let many people use the same subject number (instead i use subject number to counter-balance to certain conditions). However then it is impossible to tell which demographic data file that goes with which IAT data file.

Often I can be fairly certain because of IP number and minute and seconds it was done. However sometimes 30 people with same external IP will perform the test and be done just about at the same time.

Is there a work around for this? Or is it possible to incorporate survey-pages in the same script as the IAT so to produce a single data file?

Yes, it's certainly possible to include the demographic survey in the same script as the IAT. I just wrote the article at this link, which explains how to do this:

http://www.millisecond.com/support/docs/v3/html/howto/multiplescripts.htm

The article uses the example of combining two IATs, but the same strategy applies to combining an IAT with a survey, or any two measures.

If anything in the article is unclear, let me know.

Regards,

Sean

Ok, thanks good guide. As of now I have already integrated my survey with my IAT script, simply by adding the elements. It works just fine with one exception. The data I collect from the IAT (the rest of the script) is stored in a .dat file called iat.dat (which is the name of my script) but the data from the survey is stored in a .dat file named surv.dat (which is the name of the survey included in the script). Why is this? Is there some work around? Would using the include strategy solves this problem?

The problem right now is that I will sometimes get 50 .dat files with IAT-data and 50 .dat files with survey data to download from millisecond.com. Since they all use one of two subject  IDs (1, 2) I cannot be sure which IAT.dat goes with which surv.dat. Or will they always come up in pairs in the web file manager? If that is the case then there is no big problem.

By default, survey data is saved in a different file than reaction time data because the kinds of analyses done on these types of data are typically very different.

With surveys, it's usually much more convenient to have 1 row of data per subject, with responses from each survey item in a separate column.

With reaction time data, you are typically computing metrics such as means, medians, Cohen's D, d prime, etc. based on very large sets of trials grouped by various treatment conditions. You may often want to discard particular trials with excessively high or low latencies. These kinds of analyses would be extremely cumbersome (dare I say impossible) if all of the data from each trials (response, latency, treatment conditions) were somehow put into a single enormous row for each subject.

You can record your survey data in the same file as your reaction time data, however. Each <surveypage> is a specialized kind of <trial>, so you can insert survey pages in your /trials list of your <block> elements. When a surveypage is run as a trial in a <block> (as opposed to a page in a <survey>), its data are recorded in the the main data file (i.e., IAT.dat in your case), with each survey item appearing as a separate row.

If you want separate files, and you are recycling the same subject numbers across different subjects, then you'll need to rely on some additional cues to correlate the two data files. Specifically, you should be able to match up most of the files using the subject number, date, and time columns. In the event those values are the same for multiple participants, you could disambiguate them using the ip address, which is saved in the name of the data file.

-Sean

Hi Sean,

I've used a batch file to combine an IAT with a survey. However, at the end of the IAT, there appears a page saying "The experiment has ended". Only when you press CTRL + b, you are led to the survey part. Is it possible to avoid the page in between?

I tried to put the survey part into the IAT file, changing "surveypage" into block, "questions" into "trials" and "survey" into "expt". Do I have to change for example the "textbox" into "trial" as well? How does the programme know then what format the question is supposed to have?

Thanks in advance.

Maria 

Hi Maria,

To remove the "The experiment has ended." message, just delete the "/endlock=true" command from the <defaults> element.

Sounds like you've otherwise gotten the <batch> option to work. Let me know if you need anything else.

-Sean