Millisecond Forums

Hi Sean,

thanks for the hint. Is it possible to track the Ip-Adress and Mac-Adress via this participants reporting?
This would be quite useful!!

Best,
Erik

Hi Erik,

Also note that Inquisit now offers automatic tracking through your Millisecond account. On millisecond.com, select the My Account menu, then Participants. Or just follow this link: https://www.millisecond.com/myaccount/reporting/rptscripts.aspx

You'll then see a list of your scripts for which data has been collected, and you can click Activity Log to see participant activity for the script.

This feature is automatic and doesn't require any programming or setup.

Regards,
Sean 

Thank you - this was helpful!

Best,

Erik

Yes, that is correct. Note that the IP address property is of limited value for tracking purposes anyway.

There is no guarantee that an interface (even the one establishing the internet connection) is assigned a *public* (i.e., globally routable) address. Many, if not most, people will be behind a NAT and their interfaces will be assigned *private* addresses (10.x.x.x; 192.168.x.x) which are *not globally unique* and unsuitable for tracking or geolocation.

Even if the assigned IP is a public one, IPs are often assigned dynamically. I.e. the next time the interface connects it may be assigned a different IP from the ISP's available block. IP address thus is also unsuitable for tracking double-responders. Even geolocation for public addresses is coarse and imperfect.

Bottom line: If some form of respondent tracking is desired, you may be better off using the 1st NIC's macaddress (computer.macaddress.1), which is (with minor exceptions and disregarding spoofability) that interface's globally unique identifier.

HTH,

~Dave

Put differently, I will not be able to track computer.ipaddress.2 in an online study, because many computers do not have a 2nd active NIC device. Thus, in practice I will not be able to capture computer.ipaddress.2. Is this right?

Erik,

computer.ipaddress.2 will only ever be valid *if* there is a 2nd active NIC device that has an IP address assigned.

Hi Dave,

in the actual Inquisit version 4.0.3 this error still occurs:

'computer.ipaddress.2' is not a valid setting.

Is there any solution possible?

Thanks!

Erik

Apparently Inquisit will throw this error when the computer does not actually have a second device which could have an IP address assigned to it. Hmm, my personal opinion is that the script should run regardless and just record nothing for the non-existent interface. I'll file a bug for this.

~Dave

thanks for the advice!

i just tried to incorporate computer.ipaddress.2, but get an error message  "/columns: 'computer.ipaddress.2' is not a valid setting."

<data >
 / columns = [date, time, computer.ipaddress.1,subject, blocknum, trialnum, blockcode, trialcode, pretrialpause, posttrialpause, windowcenter,
 trialduration, trialtimeout, blocktimeout, response, correct, latency, inwindow, stimulusnumber, stimulusitem, stimulusvpos, stimulushpos, stimulusonset,
 stimulusnumber, stimulusitem, computer.availablememory, computer.cpuspeed, display.width, display.height, build, computer.ipaddress.2 ]
</data>

Do you have any suggestions?

Regards,

Erik

Well, unfortunately the magic pieces of code that make up Inquisit have to be delivered to the client computers somehow...:-)

For starters include your / your advisor's contact info, institutional affiliation, etc. for your potential participants so they can visit your site, email questions, learn more about the research before taking part, etc. Note that there is a growing body of literature dealing with both theoretical and practical aspects (such as maximizing participation / minimizing dropouts) of online research. You might start with "Dimensions of Internet Science" by Reips & Bosnjak (2001).

Regards,

~Dave