icon. From the experiments that are available to you, you select the experiment that you wish to format .Clicking on the edit button
of the experiment, will take you to the formatting page for this experiment.
Consent
In the
Consent field you can insert the text of the consent form that you wish participants to agree with or sign, prior to taking part in your experiment. The consent form is one of the most pivotal parts of the experiment. It is an official agreement, a contract, between the researcher and the participants. The consent should include details around the research, the data that will be collected, how they will be handled by the researchers, the ways by which you can communicate with your participants, any legal matters that you wish your participants to be aware of, etc. You can format the text of the consent, using the same tools that are available for formatting the
Description. You can add your signature and also request participants' signature too. In this case, note that the anonymity of the participants is compromised. Any changes you make to your consent form, while your experiment is ongoing, will be conveyed to your participants who will be asked to sign the new consent form again. Both the researcher and the participants have access to the consent forms that they have signed. Both parties have the option to download their consent as Pdf document. Since consent is like a contract, we provide the option for anyone to check such documents for authenticity. The link for this service is located at the footer of the page
Check document authenticity.
Items
The next option on the upper horizontal menu is
Items. In this field, you are asked to synthesise your experiments by defining the questionnaires and tasks that will be included in this experiment. Those tasks and questionnaires should have already been created. In the field
Item, you select
Search. Your list of questionnaires and tasks appears, along with different translations that you might have available. From these, you select the items that comprise your experiment.
Every new item added in the experiment is set as last and inactive by default. This is done to avoid disturbing the experimental process for participants who are already taking part in the research.
For every item in the experiment you can change its position, activate or inactivate it, for all or only future participants, and more. Changing the order of items will only affect new participations. Changes in the experimental flow for already participating participants can be done in each one's special participant page of the experiment.
Value of _exp_version variable
The field
Value of _exp_version variable appears only when you have included tasks amongst the elements of your experiment. Defining this field is not compulsory and it is recommended to fill it in only when your task has multiple versions. More details on this variable can be found in the section
Insert code and files.
Columns' prefix
The field
Columns' prefix is a useful field when questionnaires are repeated during the experimental process. This could lead to repetition of some columns names in your database, without you being able to distinguish the time points at which they were acquired. If you do not have questionnaires that are repeated during the experimental process, you can leave this field blank. Otherwise, you are advised to enter a prefix, for example
t1,
t2, to distinguish between the different time points when your questionnaires are administered.
Group Number
With the
Group No field you can group specific items in your experiment. For items to belong to the same group, you have to assign them the same group value. This filed is useful mainly when you want to make use of randomisation options.
Locked in-group position
By ticking this box, the position of the item remains fixed within the specific group. The position of the item within a group, corresponds to the order with which this particular item has, within the list of items that constitute your group.
Days & hours of administration
With these options you can define specific days of the week and hours during these days during which the item will be available and as such the participant can continue the experimental procedure.
The participant is informed for these restrictions by the platform. The choosen days and hours apply for every future week and as long as the participant stays inactive or does not resume the experiment at the allowed week days and hours.
Skippable
This option allows your participants to skip specific items. There are two options tha can become available to the participant.
The first one is to complete the item later on during the experimental procedure. If the participant chooses this, the item will be moved to the last available position in the experimental procedure or the group that it belongs to. If, in the experimental procedure or within the specific group, an item is locked to appear last, a skipped item will appear before the locked position item.
The second option concerns the permanent bypass of the specific item. If the participant chooses this, based on the researcher's plan, apart from the bypass of the specific item, all remaining items of the same group or all available items of the experiment can also be bypassed.
When an item is marked as skippable, during the experiment, the
Skip button appears. By clicking this button, the participant is presented with the available options, as they are defined by the researcher.
Completion time restriction
This option allows you to define, in seconds, the time within which you allow participants to fill in a task or questionnaire. If participant fail to complete the item in the given time, the remaining item's questions will be bypassed. If you tick the option
Visible Countdown, a countdown will appear to participants notifying them of the remaining time to complete this Item. Finally, in case of time violation from a participant you must choose between
Bypass item where when time expires the experimental procedure continues to the next item,
Bypass group's items where when time expires all remaining items of the same group are bypassed and excluded from the experimental procedure,
Bypass remaining items where once the completion time expires, any items of the experiment that remain will be skipped, effectively leading to the completion of the experiment.
Pause Duration
In the
Pause Duration field, you can specify the length of time that a participant should abstain from the experiment, after completing the task or questionnaire and before resuming the experimental process.
Prologue
In the field
Prologue you have the option to insert text that will appear before the task or questionnaire. Formatting
and function embedding
is done the same way as in the
Question filed.
Epilogue
In the field
Epilogue you have the option to insert text that will appear after the task or questionnaire. Formatting
and function embedding
is done the same way as in the
Question filed.
Routing function
The
Routing function field is for very specific cases and we advise to use it only when absolutely necessary. When this field is specified, it alters the way participants are directed to the elements of the experiment and/or the following pause duration. It will exclude participants from specific elements of the experiment, based on specific responses that they have made and the time in which these responses were submitted. If the field is left blank, the participant will continue to the next element of the experimental flow, as this was specified by the researcher. The code must be written in javascript and it is fed, by the platform, with seven arguments which you can use:
- _answers: an array of strings that correspond to all the available answers of the participant to this questionnaire. The answer to the first question, corresponds to the variable _answers[0], etc. Otherwise, it holds the text provided as the answer. Please note that the choices that the participants make have values starting from 1 and not from 0. If no answer was submitted, these appear as empty strings.
- _intimes: an array of strings that correspond to millisecond values. Each value is the amount of time (duration) that was required from participants to fill in and submit each answer. The duration of the first answer is represented as _intime[0] and so on. For the answers that were fabricated by the researchers, '0' is provided while for the bypassed or ununswered questions empty string is provided. For every other unanswered question an empty string is provided.
- _times: an array of strings that consists of three Unix timestamps, in seconds. The first, _times[0], corresponds to the present time. The second, _times[0], equals to the start time of the experiment that the specific questionnaire is a part. The third, _times[2], corresponds to the start time of the specific questionnaire.
- _extra: is an object with names as keys and an array of values that correspond to the values of the Extra columns, as these have been defined for participants of the experiment. For example, for the extra column variable dogowner, its first value would appear as _extra['dogowner'][0].
- _demo: an object that has as keys the names and values of the demographic information, as these have been defined in the experiment where the questionnaire is included. The available keys are mentioned in the section of the manual that concerns the database. For example, for the demographics variable gender, the values of this variable would be found under the name _demo['gender'].
- _lang, that contains the translation language of the questionnaire, e.x. "en", "el".
- and _global, that is a variable different for each participant, that is assigned with whatever value the researcher decides through the routing functions, either of question's either questions group's either experiment's item routing function. For the present function, modifications of this variable will be saved
The function that you will enter, should be returning an object that contains at least one of the following keys:
- goto: contains the name of the next element. When elements have prefixes, these are followed by a "dot" at the start of the item's name for example, return { 'goto': 't1.quest1' }
- bypass: contains the names of elements that will be excluded and they should be separated by a comma. When elements contain prefixes, these are followed by a "dot" at the start of the item's name, for example, return { 'bypass': 't1.quest1, quest02, t2.quest03' }. An asterisk is given as item's name, it represents all the item's or all the items with a specific prefix. If an asterisk is given as a prefix name, it represent all prefixes.
- and pause: contains the number of minutes the participant should abstain from the experiment, after completing the task or questionnaire and before resuming the experimental process, for example, return { 'pause': 120 }
If the function returns blank variables or no variables, the process continues to the next element.
An example of Routing Code/Function, follows
if(_answers[1]=='2'){
return {'goto':'task1','bypass':'quest1,t0.task2'};
}else{
if(_answers[1]=='3'&&_answers[2]=='1'){
return {'bypass':'t1.task2',pause:60};
}
}
Randomisation
Two useful functions to control you experimental flow, are
in-group items order randomisation and
group order randomisation. The first one, allows you to randomise, how Items are presented within the group that they belong to. If the position of an item, within a group, is in
Locked in-group position, this item will keep its position within the group. The second option allows you to randomise or not the order of groups. Items with
Locked in-group position, will maintain their position but the order that they are presented during the experiment will depened on their group position randomisation. For this type of randomisation to be available, for every group, the items of each group must be in a raw, the one below the other. Option
Locked group position will keep the position of a specific group of Items fixed. These two randomisation options can be combined
Auto-repetitions
With
groups auto-repetitions a number of selected groups can be repeated after the completion of the all available items for a number of times. To select a group for auto-repetition select the
Included in repetitions options. Repetitions administration for a specific participant can be paused from the appropriate option in the participant's special page.
Control and accessibility
Two buttons are located at the top left hand side of your screen and allow you to control your experiment by setting it as
Active/
Inactive or
Hidden.
When an experiment is
Inactive, it is not accessible to anyone, even to participants who are already taking part in the experiment. When an experiment is
Hidden, it does not appear in the list of available experiments in the platform but it is accessible via
Personal Invitations or the
special sharing link. This link is available to you to share
with participants and is located on the right side of the experiment title. The link remains active, until you renew it. For experiments that are
Available to everyone, the common link
which is found in the same location and can also be used for sharing.
The
language button allows you to define the language that you wish to use for this experiment. This is important, as only participants who understand the requirements of the experiment should be allowed to participate. Your language selection will make experiment undiscoverable through the platform's search function, for all participants that have excluded the specific language in their search filters.
The option
Test, gives you and your research team members the opportunity to test your experiments by viewing and executing these as a participant. This test run is executed under the participant name
**ME** and the results are accessible in the participant list, similar to other participants.