If you need help in designing, organising, executing, analysing your experiments or in anything else related to scientific research, contact us in team@experiama.com
Demographics
As a Participant, it is considered good practice to devote some time to answer questions that concern your demographic information and other personal details. To do that, you have to select Demographics from the drop down menu , located at the upper part of your screen. You will be asked to answer questions around your birth, your physical characteristics, your social activities and education as well as information around your health, etc.
This information is asked from you, for two main reasons:
  • Many Researchers specify specific criteria for participation and only participants who fulfil these criteria can take part in the research. As a result, participants who do not match these criteria as well as participants who have not completed all the required information will be excluded from certain types of research where they might not be able to participate.
  • To take part in certain experiments, researchers would need to access some or all of your demographic information. To participate in these experiments you should consent that your information, as you have entered it, could be shared with the researcher.
As some of your demographic information might change over time, periodically -over several months- you will be asked to revise and update it.
It should be noted that the researchers do not have access to your personal information, without your consent, which is required prior to you participating in any type of research. However, when for a specific research certain critiria for participation are defined, your participation in this research means that you fulfil these criteria. For example, if a specific experiment is recruiting males, between 30 and 60 years of age, it would be possible for you to participate only if fulfil these criteria which means that the researcher will know that you are a male between 30 and 60 years old.
Participations
Participate
There are four different ways that you can participate in an experiment:
  • You can select an experiment you are interested in, among these that are currently available on the platform.
    To look for available research, you can use the search button at the left hand side of your screen. Then, from Languages, you select those you know, so as to limit the availability of experiments to those you can understandearch.
  • Via a link that was directly shared with you.
    These links concern experiments that is either already publicly available through the platform or experiments that are hidden. Either way, you must fulfil the participation criteria.
  • Via a group invitation for an experiment.
  • Group invitations are sent out by the research team to a group or groups of participants who share a common characteristics (e.g. diagnosis, diagnostic criterion , etc)
  • Via a personal invitation to take part in an experiment.
    Personal invitations are sent from the researchers directly to participants and are not anonymous. Researcher knows that the participant accepted their invitation is the one they sent the invitation.
A general rule about preserving your anonymity is the following. The more impersonal and publicly accessible is the way by which you get access to research, the more your anonymity is preserved as a participant.
You can withdraw your participation to research yourself only if you have not yet replied to any research questions or completed any task. This however, by no means implies that you have any obligation to continue with the research, if you do not wish to. You can Mute a particular project so that it does not appear in your project list anymore. Muted projects will appear in the subcategory Muted. If you wish to withdraw your participation from any given study, you can make your wish known to the researcher, by sending them a message, in order for them to remove you and your data from the project.
It should be noted that completing an experiment, does not mean your participation is concluded as more questionnaires or tasks concerning the experiment may become available i the future.
If for any reason, you do not wish to receive notifications, invitations for research, messages or have any interaction through the platform in relation to a specific researcher, you have the option to restrict them.
Anonymity
When you agree to participate in research, a set of numbers and letters is assigned to you, as identification (Id) that is unique for you in relation to a specific researcher. This is how you are known to a researcher. This identification, unique for each researcher, is kept unchanged for any research project you participate in and is run by the same researcher. The platform does not share any of your personal information with the researchers, except from any demographic data that are necessary for the research. This only happens after you have consented to share this information. However, there are some ways, direct and indirect, via which someone could collect information from you:
  • Indirectly, via participating in research that requires you to fulfil specific criteria in order to take part. For example, when a research project is recruiting males, between 30 to 60 years of age. In this case it would only be possible for you to take part, if you fulfil these requirements.
  • Directly, via answering questions that are part of the research.
  • Directly, via personal messages that you might exchange with the research team.
  • Directly, via signing a consent form.
Your anonymity cannot be preserved when you receive direct invitations to participate in research. Additionally, this means that when you accept personal invitations for participation, your anonymity is no longer preserved not only for this research project but also for any other that is run by the same researcher. This is due to the fact that your identification is kept the same, in relation to a specific researcher.
Answers/Data
Any answer to questions that you submit as part of the research process, is available to the researcher or research team. If you do not wish to share any information with the researcher, you are advised to not answer the questions whose answer you do not wish to reveal. As a participant, you do not have direct access to your answers, so if you wish to change any of your answers or you have specific demands around them, you have to liaise with the researcher. The researcher is responsible for the experiment and has the right to manage your data.
Consent
For all research projects, researchers are obliged to provide you with a consent form. The consent form usually includes details around the experiment, the type of data that will be collected for this research, the ways you can get in touch with the research team, any legal issues and implications that this research might entail and other relevant information. In many ways, the consent form is very similar to a contract between you, as a participant, and the researcher. For some experiments, apart from your confirmation, the researcher may request your signature. In that case, note that your anonymity is conmpromised. The consent form is different for each experiment you participate in. If for any reason changes have been made to a consent form that you have already signed, you will be notified about those changes. In that case, you will need to go through the consent form again and state that you agree with those changes, in order to continue with the experiment. While you are participating in a specific research project, at any given time, you have access to the most up to date consent form that you have signed. You are strongly advised to download and save the consent form, for every experiment you participate in, as it could also serve as proof for your participation.
Report
Each researcher to whose experiment you participate, could send you a report concerning your performance and the results of the questionnaires and tasks that you completed. When a report is being sent, you receive a notification, and you can access and print the report which is located at the main page of each experiment. The report can be altered, at any given time, from the researcher.
Researchers
Communication
To be able to communicate with a researcher, you must participate in any of his available experiments. Once you have agreed to participate, you will be able to exchange messages with the researchers concerning the specific experiment that you participated in.
Messages
To message, click on Participations and then select the experiment corresponding to the researcher you wish to get in touch with. You will then be taken to the experiment page where you can select the option Messages which is located in the upper right corner of your screen. There you will see the option to message the researcher.
Meetings
This function allows you to make an appointment with someone from the research team in which the communication will be interactive with a video call. To send a request for scheduling a meeting, you need to navigate to the specific page of the experiment of interest in which you are participating and click on the Meeting option. The researcher can then set their availability and send it to you in order for you to select the meeting date and time. The Meeting option is not available from the start as a response to the experiment must first have been submitted.
Restrict
You have the option to restrict a researcher. By doing that you prohibit them from exchanging messages with you and directly inviting you to take part in new experiments. By restricting a researcher, you also restrict the platform from notifying you around projrcts you are part of and concerns this particular researcher. Additionally, you are not allowed to access any projects that are linked to this researcher and these research projects will also not show when you use the search function of the platform.
To restrict a researcher, you go on the page of one of his experiments, next to the researcher’s name you select Restrict and follow the process.
Account
Your account is managed through the menu options at the top of the screen. You can easily customize the notifications sent to your browser or email, change the display language of the platform functions, change your password and delete your account. Deletion is not executed instantly. The deletion request is executed a few days later in order to allow you to prevent an error.
Questionnaires
New questionnaire
To create a new questionnaire, at the left hand side of the screen you select Items. This category includes all the questionnaires and tasks that you have already added as well as the option New. By pressing it, you are asked to choose the type of your item, Questionnaire, and a name for your new questionnaire. Upon submitting the name, your new questionnaire will appear in the item's list. By selecting your questionnaire and then the default translation option, you are guided to its special page which will allow you to edit your new questionnaire.
Translations
For any of your questionnaires, you can create translated versions by clicking the icon next to Translations category. When adding a new questionnaire, automatically, a new translation entry is created for you to edit with predefined language field (changed at any time), the language you have chosen for this platform's interface. You can modify the corresponding language field of a translation by choosing Change Language from the menu at the right hand side of the page. For any questionnaire, it is necessary to specify a main tranlation that will be the prototype based on which other translation will be designed. First, you will have to format this main version of your questionnaire and then you can proceed with any other translated versions that you wish to create. In these other versions, not all the formatting options will be available, but you have the option to change the language in which your content will be presented. Please note, that you will not have the option to upload any extra images that are not already included in the main version of your questionnaire. You specify the main translation of your questionnaire by selecting Set as default from the menu on the right hand-side of the translations’ page.
New Questions
To add questions, navigate to the default translation of your questionnaire. There, you have two options. You can either create a Question or you can create a Section.
By selecting the option Question, you are asked to define the following fields. Please note that as the platform mainly aims to accommodate research and prepare your data for analysis, some of the fields you are asked to specify might appear unusual, but are created to serve these purposes.
Name
In the Name field, you are asked to define the name of the column or variable that would correspond to the specific question in the final experiment's database. The platform would have already selected a name for you and we recommend not changing this, unless you are very comfortable with these types of manipulations. You cannot use the same name for more than one question. In any case at any time, you can use Auto name columns function which registers appropriate column names for all the available questions.
Question
In the Question field, you are asked to input the question of your choice and format it using the tools that are provided to you. These tools are located at the right-hand side of the title of this field . Multimedia elements can also be added to the question, by selecting the formatting option . There is no restriction to the number of multimedia elements that you can input, as long as these are derived from an external source. The option to upload is only available for images and is restricted to a limited number of images which should fulfil certain quality criteria that would guarantee that a certain amount of storage space is not exceeded.
For a more dynamic and personilized way of questions, through the option, you can add your code/algorithm anywhere in the text. This code must be a function whose returned value will be placed in the text at the position of the injected function. Special attention must be paid in order, if necessary, only the string values to be returned to be formatted. Code of each such function must be javascript and is fed with seven arguments:
  • _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. 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 not be saved
Many questionnaires include series of questions with the same answering options (multiple choice, single answer, text). To save time from inputting the exact answering options for each such questions you have the option to create them at once. Input all questions in the field Question as a single one, separating them with the word "__NEWQ__". Then insert the options all these questions share.
Options
The Options field is important as it determines both the type of the question and the answer that it requires.
  • With Text, the participant will be required to input their answer in text form
  • With Number, a numeric value is required, for example 3 or -0.7. You can specify the minimum and maximum numeric value that your answers can take and you can also add the increment by which your available answer options will increase/decrease. This is done by specifying Step but it does not prevent participants from inputting answers that violate this rule. If you wish to create a VAS scale type answer, then you can tick the option Slider
  • . With this option, you are also given the option to mark the start and the end of the slider with labels.
  • With Date, the answer should be in a specific date/time format. In this type of answer you can select from three different settings
    • Datetime, where answers include both date and time in form of YYYY-mm-ddTHH:mins:secs
    • Date, where your answers include only date in form of YYYY-mm-dd
    • Time, where answers include only time in form of HH:mins:secs. There is also a Step option that determines how the time values increase or decrease but it does not prevent participants from inputting answers that violate this rule
  • With Confirmation only, the participant will be required to just confirm an input. This option appears as checkbox to participants. They need to tick, in order to proceed to the next question.
  • With Multiple choices, the participant will select between predefined available choises. The exact answering capability is defined by whether you will chooce
    • One answer, with which participant is obligated to pick only one answer. Furthermore, by marking Require details you can require details in form of text from participant, about a specific answer.
      By checking Slider, the available answer options for each question, will appear in form of a slider.
      If you only select one option, the format of your answer will be of the true/false type (/).
    • Multiple answers, where participant can chooce any of the available options or none. Every option will be of the true/false type (/).
      The platform, apart from this way of accepting multiple answers, can also create sych question by concatenating multiple options of the true/false (/) type under the same question. For this, you will have to create as many questions as the answer options corresponding to this question, where the field Question will contain exactly the same question for all of them and for each of them a single option is defined. The reason for preffering the above way is that it gives the opportunity to require details for any answer and also for database structure reasons as every question included in the constructed question will have its own column in the final database without answer cancatenation.
    Each option could be formatted in the same way as the field Question using the tools that are located at the right-hand side of the field including the restrictions. The same goes with the embeded functions .
    By selecting the option Randomize order, the available answer options for each question, will appear in a randomised order each time presented to a participant.
    The option Page break is also available at the end. By selecting that for a specific question, you ensure that whenever this question is present, no other question will follow over the same page. Participant will have to submit answers to continue with the rest. This field could be useful when you wish that some questions appear alone and not in groups of five, which is the predefined option on the platform.
  • With Drawing, the participant will be required to draw on a square canvas of a maximum of 600 pixels pre side. Moreover, you have the option to define a Background for the participants to draw on.
    The answers returned from these drawings are in form of array of points. Every element of this array represents a stroke. Every stroke element is also an array that includes three element. The first one is an array of points on x-axis, the second is an array of points on y-axis and the third an array of numbers that represents the width of the stroke. All these three elements of a stroke have the same ammount of data and define the points on canvas where the stroke is placed, in a timely manner. For example [[[3,9,10,12],[1,1,8,7],[0,1,2,1]],[[5,5,4,6],[8,7,4,5],[0,3,3,2]]] represents a drawing that consists of two strokes, from which the first one passes through coordinates (3,1),(9,1),(10,8) and (12,7).
  • With Media, the participant will be required to submit a recording or image file with a description if they see fit. In this type of answer you can select from two different types
    • Image, where answer will be an image either by participant's decive camera or by image file upload. The image will be converted to jpeg format with a maximum width of 600px and with maximum size of 200kb. Participant can provide a note alongside with the image.
    • Recording, where answer will be a recording either by participant's decive microphone or by audio file upload. The recording must be of a maximum width of 600px. If device's microphone is selected for the recording the bitrate is determined at 8000. Participant can provide a note alongside with the recording.
    The answers returned have the format {filename},{description}. The researcher can have access to the answer's file (audio or image) either through participant's page for the experiment or through database downloading where he will be prompted to download an archived set of such files with names that correspond to the filenames of the answers.
Routing function
The Routing function field is for very specific cases and we advise to use it only when absolutely necessary. Specifying this function, after answer submission, it could exclude participants from specific questions and/or force a pause duration, based on their previous responses regarding the specific questionnaire and the time in which these responses were submitted. If the field is left blank, the participant will continue to the next question based on the predifined flow, as this was specified by the researcher. The code must be written in javascript and it is fed, by the platform, with nine 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. 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.
  • _num: An integer that represents the order of the answer of the current question in the whole answers array _answers.
  • _answer: a string corresponding to the answer of the current question or task. The same as _answers[_num].
  • _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.
  • _intime: a string corresponding to the duration of the answer of the current question or task. The same as _intimes[_num].
  • _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:
  • bypass: contains the questions that will be bypassed and excluded. Questions are specified by their ascending number and they should be separated by a comma. For example, return { 'bypass': '5,6,7-15' }. When questions are omitted like this, their corresponding variables in the database for the participant will have empty string values.
  • pause: contains the number of minutes the participant should abstain from the experiment, after completing the question and before resuming the experimental process meaning resuming the questionnaire. For example, return { 'pause': 120 }
  • and msg: contains a string that will be presented to the user in form of message-box after the completion of the question. For example, return { 'msg': 'Correct answer' }. In case there are multiple messages from the submitted questions, the strings will be concatenated to one message using new line as a separator
If the function fails, returns blank variables or no variables, the process continues to the next question. Moreover, the routing function of the last available question of a questionnaire will be omitted. An example of Routing Code/Function, follows
if(_answer=='2'){ return {'bypass':'6-45'}; }else{ if(_answer=='3'&&_answers[4]=='1'){ return {'bypass':'46',pause:60}; } }
Grouping Questions
In the page of the default translation of your questionnaire, the second available choice is that of adding a Section.
With this you are asked to fill, if this is necessary for your research, the field Label. This concerns any introductory information or instructions on how to fill in the the subgroup of questions that follow. This will be constantly visible to participants while they are filling in this particular section of the questionnaire. Consening the formatting, the same apply as for the field Question using the tools that are located at the right-hand side of the field including the restrictions. The same goes with the embeded functions .
The purpose of adding introduction and instructions within the questionnaire could be two-fold. First, it has a practical role of providing with and reminding participants of instructions that they need to be aware of to fill in these questions. Secondly, it determines a separate set of questions for which, if the researcher wishes to do so, they could attribute specific characteristics.
  • Participants are never presented with, at the same time, questions that belong to different sections.
  • With the option Randomize sections' order, the order that participants could fill in each section of a questionnaire, could be randomised.
  • Through the option Randomize following questions' order that is located at the end of each Section element, the researcher can select to randomise the order of questions that belong to the same section
Regarding the mechanism through which the questions or the sections are randomised, researchers have the option to lock (Locked position) the order of sections or questions, if they wish to. This ensures that the order in which they appear is fixed.
If a section is not followed by questions, this is not presented to the participant.
Completion time restriction
This option allows you to define, in seconds, the time within which you allow participants to fill the questions of the section. If participant fail to complete these questions in the given time, the remaining 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 section and Bypass questionnaire where when time expires all remaining questions of the of the questionnaire will be bypassed, effectively leading to the completion of the questionnaire.
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 section of the questionnaire and before resuming it.
Prologue
In the field Prologue you have the option to insert text that will appear before the start of the Section. 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 end of the Section. Formatting and function embedding is done the same way as in the Question filed.
Regarding Routing function of each Section element, it has the same rules and functionality as the questions' Routing function except that _answer and _intime variables are not defined. For this function to apply, participant must have submitted at least one question from this section, no more questions must be available for answering from this section while at least one question from the questionnaire must be available for answering.
Rating function/code
Clicking on the edit button of the questionnaire entry, you can find the option Rating function/code. In the only, dark field that appears on the screen you can input the code that you might wish to use to rate your questionnaire. If you do not have any coding knowledge, please leave the field blank. The purpose of this function is to automatically rate your questionnaire. Moreover, all the rating variables that are a result of this function can be included in the experiment's database. The code must be written in javascript and it is fed, by the platform, with eight arguments which you can use:
  • _answers: an array of strings that correspond to all the answers of the participant to this questionnaire. The answer to the first question, corresponds to the variable _answers[0], etc. For tasks, the length of this array is always 1. 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 tasks, the length of this array is always 1. 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 two types of Unix timestamp times, in seconds. The first, _times[0], equals to the time when the participants started filling in the questionnaire. The second type, _times[1], equals to the time at which participants submitted answers to all available questions.
  • _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".
  • _database: it can take values of either 0 or 1, depending on whether this function will be used to overview the answers to the questions within this platform or to input values to the database. It could help with a more coherent presentation of the questionnaire results as usually, when results are presented, a more user friendly presentation is preferred.
This function should return an object with keys only the names of the new variables that are relevant to the questionnaire ratings. As such, if _database==1 the results are going to be inputted in the database, and so they return value will be like { 'quest1_ratescore1': 0, 'quest1_ratescore2': 10 }. If _database==0, function's results will be used for the overview of the answers and so the return object can be like { 'Symptom intensity': '+++' }. Special attention should be given to the fact that the object that is returned when _database==1, should always contain all the keys, even if any of them is of empty string value. This rule is important for the database that would be created and should always be followed, even when the questionnaire under rating does not contain all the answers or for any reason, it cannot be rated.
Code for the rating of an eighteen question, multiple choice, single answers, questionnaire is presented here, as an example.
let rated_cols={'Rated1':0,'Rated2':0}; let v1=0; while(v1<_answers.length){//check for answers completion if(_answers[v1]==''){ if(_database==1){ return {'Rated1':'','Rated2':''};//the code must always return an object with keys the outcome variables names, when _database==1 }else{ return ; } } v1++; } let v2=[0,2,4,5,6,3,7,8,10,13];//questions that define Rated1 outcome variable, the rest defone Rated2 outcome variable v1=0; while(v1<_answers.length){ if(v2.includes(v1)){ rated_cols['Rated1']+=Number(_answers[v1]); }else{ rated_cols['Rated2']+=Number(_answers[v1]); } v1++; } if(_database==1){ return rated_cols; }else{ return {'Symptoms':rated_cols['Rated1']+rated_cols['Rated2']}; }
Tasks
New Task
To create a new task, at the left hand side of the screen you select Items. This category includes all the questionnaires and tasks that you have already added as well as the option New. By pressing it, you are asked to choose the type of your item, Task, and a name for your new task. Upon submitting the name, your new task will appear in the item's list. By selecting your task and then the default translation option, you are guided to its special page which will allow you to edit your new task.
Translations
For any of your tasks, you can create translated versions by clicking . When adding a new task, automatically, a new translation entry is created for you to edit with predefined language field (changed at any time) the language you have chosen for this platform's interface. You can modify the corresponding language field of a translation by choosing Change language from the menu at the right hand side of the page. For any task, it is necessary to specify a main tranlation that will be the prototype based on which other translation will be designed. First, you will have to format this main version of your task and then you can proceed with any other translated versions that you wish to create. In these other versions, not all the formatting options will be available, but you have the option to change the language in which your content will be presented. Please note, that you will not have the option to upload any extra images that are not already included in the main version of your task. You specify the main translation of your task by selecting Set as default from the menu on the right hand-side of the translations’ page.
Task development
The platform does not provide you with any framework to develop a task. This requires programming knowledge, on your behalf. We advise that task development should be only executed and checked by experienced programmers.
Modify and link a task
By clicking on the task that you wish to format, navigate to its default translation. There you can modify your task
Name
In the Name field you enter the name of column that would correspond to the outcomes of this task in the experiment's database. The platform has already pre-selected a name for you, we advise you to not change this name, unless you have the required expertise.
Introduction/Instructions
In the Label field you should input your introduction, the task instructions and any other information that you wish to provide to your participants. You can format this input, by using the tools that are provided to you in the right side of the field’s title . Multimedia elements can also be added to this field by selecting the corresponding formatting option . There is no restriction to the number of multimedia elements that you can input, as long as these are derived from an external source. The option to upload is only available for images and is restricted to a limited number of images which should fulfil certain quality criteria that would guarantee that a certain amount of storage space is not exceeded. For the embedded functions span class='bcwhite'>, its done the same way and with same rules as described in the Question field.
Task source
Two options are available for this field. You can either insert the Code&Files that correspond to the task or you can insert an External link via which the task will be executed.
Insert code and files
For this first option, the code you will input will be placed in the field <body> of an html file that will be executed on the participants’ browser. The code can include html, css and javascript. Participants will be transferred to the page where the task is executed via a popup window. To personalise your task, there are four global variables that are automatically provided by the platform:
  • variable _exp_version contains a number that can be used for serving different versions of the task. If, for example, your task could be administered in many different ways, this variable could determine which version of the task will be executed. This way, you can avoid uploading multiple copies of tasks that are identical. The value of this variable is determined by you, and you can set the value when you insert a task in an experiment.
  • variable _exp_patientTimeOrder contains the increasing number of the participant based on the time their participation started. For example, 1 will be attributed to the first participant who participated in the experiment.
  • variable _exp_patientId contains the unique number that corresponds to the participant's Id.
  • variable _exp_visit contains the number of visits to the task for the participant (1 if it is the first time to visit the task etc).
  • variable _exp_desktop equals to 1 if the participant uses a desktop computer for the task else (e.x. application, mobile, tablet) 0.
The files you upload should belong to one of the following types .css, .dat, .gif, .jpg, .js, .json, .png, .txt, .mp3, .mid, and they all have the same relative address and can be accessed as if they are all located in the folder where the code file is located:
<img src='myimage.jpg'>
It is considered good practice to source the task using an external link:
<script src='link/to/my/task.jsp'></script>
When the task is complete, it must communicate with the platform in order to inform that it has concluded and furthermore pass the possible results. This must be done even if no results were obtained or results are stored elsewhere. For this you should use the function window.parent.parent.postMessage which is fed by a message that is an object containing the key _exp_results that should be given a value of string. This string cannot contain tab characters (' ','\u000b') which will be automatically removed by the platform. As soon as the platform receives this message, the popup task window will close automatically and the results of the task will be saved.
An example of this process follows::
if(window.parent.parent){ window.parent.parent.postMessage({_exp_results:JSON.stringify({'a1': '12hh4j5g2g3…'})}, '*'); }
In some instances, completing the task is not your only necessary requirement. For example, there are cases when you might want to ensure that participants only access the task once. In this case, the value of the variable (_exp_visit), may not be enough to determine how many times a participant attempted to complete the part of a task that you consider important. It is also possible that the task contains instructions that participants could access multiple times or participants might close the task window before completing the task. For these reasons, while the task is executed, task results or any other relevant information are communicated to the platform so, if participant leaves task before final submission of results, the priviously submitted results to be stored and task not be repeated by the participant. This is also done by using the function window.parent.parent.postMessage which is now fed by a message which is an object containing the key _exp_temp that should contain a string. This string cannot contain tab characters (' ','\u000b') which will be automatically removed when inputting the string. As a result, when researchers require that participants execute part of the task only once, when this task part begins, we can update the task results so that these will be saved and the participant will not have the option of completing this task again. Moreoverm if we are not interested in these last results, but we care more about not been charged for this participant's try, the key _exp_temp must contain an empty string. This way, participant cannot retry the task and our coins remain intact.
An example of how to update the function in order to do this, follows:
if(window.parent.parent){ window.parent.parent.postMessage({_exp_temp:JSON.stringify({'a1': '12hh4j5g2g3…'})}, '*'); }
The second option, Target url, requires you to input, in the field, the web address that you have used to prepare and execute the task. When participants are taken to this address, four variables will be added in this link,_exp_version, _exp_patientTimeOrder, _exp_patientId and _exp_visit. These variables and their characteristics have been described in the section Insert code and files. Task completion and task results should be communicated to the platform, even in the case where no task results were obtained. This can be achieved via the option that was described in the section Insert code and files.
Rating function/code
Clicking on the edit button of the task entry, you can find the Rating Code/Function section. In the dark box that appears, you can input code for the automated rating of your task. The rules and guidelines that apply for this can be found in the section Rating function/code.
An example code for rating a task follows.
let rated_cols={'Rated1':0,'Rated2':0}; let answers=JSON.parse(_answers[0]);//For tasks _answers includes only one key, _answers[0] let v1,v2=[0,2,4,5,6,3,7,8,10,13]; while(v1<answers.length){ if(v2.includes(v1)){ rated_cols['Rated1']+=Number(_answers[v1]); }else{ rated_cols['Rated2']+=Number(_answers[v1]); } v1++; } return rated_cols;
Experiments
New experiment
To create a new experiment, you click on the left-hand side of your screen select the Experiments icon. In this category, you can see all the experiments you have entered so far, and by clicking on New you are asked to give a name to your new experiment. This is the name with which your experiment will appear to participants who might wish to participate. When you submit the name of your experiment, this will appear in the category Experiments. You can change the name at any time through the experiment's formmating page.
Modify experimental procedure
At the left-hand side of your screen you select the Experiments 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.
Description
The first step in modifying your experiment is adding a description. There are two types of descriptions. The short one that will be the first to be presented to a user that searches for new experiments and the detailed one. Both descriptions is what the participants will read to decide whether they are interested in your research. The short one has a limit in the number of its characters and no formatting options. For the detailed one in the upper horizontal panel you select Description, this will open a field where you can input your text. The text can be formatted by using the tools that are available on the bottom right side of this field. Multimedia elements can be inserted to your description by clicking on the corresponding button . There is no restriction to the number of multimedia elements that you can input, as long as these are derived from an external source. The option to upload is only available for images and is restricted to a limited number of images which should fulfil certain quality criteria that would guarantee that a certain amount of storage space is not exceeded.
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 examplet1,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.
Participants
Next at the horizontal menu is Participants.
Open participation requirements
Here you can specify, in detail, the characteristics of your sample. These criteria do not apply when you are inviting participants through personal invitations. Based on these criteria, your experiment will be accessible only to participants who fulfil these criteria.
Required information to share
Here you can specify which demographic and other information your participants should consent to release to you, before the start of the experiment.
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.
Evaluation function/code
The Evaluation function/code option is located in the upper horizontal panel.
With this, you can combine the answers of the questionnaires and tasks of your experiment, their ratings as these are produced by the different rating functions, as well as the extra columns variables and required demographic information variables, to get a final evaluation for each participant. If do not have programming knowledge, you are advised to leave this option blank. The code for this function is written in javascript and the input comprises of six arguments:
  • _answers: an object that contains all the available answers from each participant, for all the questions of each questionnaire and task. The keys are the names of the questionnaire and task elements that you have selected and have a prefix and a dot in their name. For example, for the questionnaire with the name quest01 and the prefix t0, the answers will be located in the _answers['t0.quest01']. For more details on how these variables are created, please see questionnaire rate function.
  • _intimes: an object that contains the time durations for answer, for each participant, for each element of the experiment. The keys for this object are identical to that of _answers. For more details on how these variables are produced, please see Rating function/code.
  • _times: an object that contains start and finish times for all the available answers for each participant, for all available elements of an experiment. The keys for this object are identical to that of _answers. For more details on how the variables of each key are created, please see questionnaire rate function.
  • _extra: an object that takes as keys the names and values of an array with the extra columns, as those have been submitted for the participant. For example, for the autocompleted variable dogowner, the first value of this variable will be accessible in _extra['dogowner'][0].
  • _demo: an object with keys the names and values of the requested demographic information, as those have been submitted by the participants. The available keys are mentioned in the section Database, Answers. For example, the value of the variable gender, from the demographics information section, could be accessed in _demo['gender'].
  • _rated: an object that contains the results of the elements of the experiment as these have been created by the different rating functions when _database=1 (for details around these values, please see the relevant section Rating function/code). The keys for this object are identical to that of _answers. For example, for the hypothetical questionnaire that was used as an example above, the rating function returned the object { 'q01_rated1': 23,'q01_rated2': 10 }, the values of this object would be accessible in _rated['t0.quest01']['q01_rated1'] , etc.
  • _database: it can take values of either 0 or 1, depending on whether this function will be used to overview the answers to the questions within this platform or to input values to the database. It could help with a more coherent presentation of the questionnaire results as usually, when results are presented, a more user friendly presentation is preferred.
This function should return an object with keys only the names of the new variables. As such, if _database==1 the results are going to be inputted in the database, and so they return value will be like { 'overallscore1': 0, 'overallscore2': 10 }. If _database==0, function's results will be used for the overview of the answers and so the return object can be like { 'Symptom intensity': '+++' }. Special attention should be given to the fact that the object that is returned when _database==1, should always contain all the keys, even if any of them is of empty string value. This rule is important for the database that would be created and should always be followed.
The results of this function appear in the special page for each participant in the field Overall Evaluation.
Report
Everytime that a participant takes part in your research, you are advised to provide them with a report containing their results and performance on the different tasks and questionnaires that are part of the experiment. The report is sent to each participant separately, from the special page of each experiment.
The field Report is located in the upper horizontal choice menu and gives you the option to automate some elements of the report process. You can define a model report that would be sent to all participants. You can format the report, and you can automatically include values in specific variables that have been created from the participants answers. To do that, use the code embed option . This code must be a function whose returned value will be placed in the text at the position of the injected function. Special attention must be paid in order, if necessary, only the string values to be returned to be formatted. The variables provided are identical to the ones that are contained in the Evaluation function/code (apart from the _database variable) and moreover the variables resulted from Evaluation function/code which are included in object _final.
For example return `${_rated['t0.quest01']['q01_rated1']}, ${_rated['t0.quest01']['q01_rated1']/_rated['t0.quest01']['q01_score']}%`
Both the researcher and the participants have the option to download their consent as Pdf document. Since reports are considered formal documents 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.
Research team members
New team member
To add a new team collaborator, at the left hand-side of your screen, select and unfold Experiments. Click on the experiment that you wish to add a new team collaborator in, and then select the option Teammates. Next, by clicking on the option Invitation, an empty registration will be added in your list of collaborators and a message will appear that will include the invitation you wish to send to your collaborator. The invitation is also accessible from the special page for the new collaborator. You can go to this page, by selecting the new registration from the list of your collaborators.
Collaborator Rights
In the special page that appears on the platform for each collaborator, you can define, even prior to your collaborator accepting your invitation, the rights that you wish to give to your collaborators, in relation to a specific experiment. There are five rights’ categories that you can select from.
  • The category Control, allows your collaborators to be able to activate and inactivate or change accessibility to your experiment using the options Available and Hidden, respectively.
  • Design allows your colleagues to change the description, consent, the items of the experiment, the required demographics information, the participation criteria and the autocompleted variables. It also gives view access to the items used in the experimental design -under the __COLLABORATIONS__ folder- and also the ability to copy items from their repertory to the main researcher's repertory.
  • Items, allows your teammates to edit the items -questionnaires and tasks- that are included in the experimental design which are located under the __COLLABORATIONS__ folder.
  • Invitations allows your collaborators to be able to sent personal or group invitations to participants.
  • Participants has two sub-categories.
    • The Overview category, allows your collaborators to overview the participants' answers and messages,
    • The Interaction category, allows your teammates to also send messages to participants, edit the items of the experiment per participant, add logs and extra columns as well as change names and alter restrictions.
  • Data, gives your collaborators access to download the database of the experiment.
Adding an teammate's item to the experiment
There are two ways to copy items to other's item reportory.
For a teammate to copy item's of their repertory to the main researcher repertory in order to be of use with their experiment, they must have been granted the right to design. If so, to add questionnaires or tasks go to the editing page of the experiment. There, select Items that is located in the upper horizontal menu. You can locate the element that you wish to add by using the Search option. Then select Copy follow the process. Please note, that all the elements you add to an experiment are actually added to the main researcher's items.
In general, anyone can copy other's items to his repertory if they know the special copy code of the item of interest. This can be acquired through the main page of the item through the button located in the title next to item's name. After the researcher has been given the code, he can copy the item through the typical process of creating a new item but by selecting the option Copy instead. The copy code of its item can be renewed anytime to prevent further unwanted copies, as all previous copy codes will not be valid.
Monitor or remove a teammate
First, you can control your collaborators actions, in relation to an experiment, by determining which rights you will give to them. Additionally, in the special page for each of your collaborators you can access the history of their actions, in relation to your experiment. This can also be done by clicking on History page of the experiment itself. You can delete a collaborator by clicking on at the upper right side of the special page that corresponds to the collaborator you wish to remove.
Invitation to participants that participante in a teammate's experiment
In order to protect the participants’ anonymity, you cannot yourselves invite these participants, in place of your teammates. You can invite participants to any experiment you wish to, by sending them a direct message, via the platform or by sending them a personal message. You can either share the link that corresponds to the experiment or you can send a link with an invitation to the experiment, provided that you have the right to do that.
Participants
New participant invitation
There are five main ways to inform participants for your experiment.
  • If you have set up your experiment as Available and not Hidden, depending on the language that you have specified for this experiment and the participation criteria that you have set, participants who are registered with the platform can see your experiment and participate, if they wish to.
  • You can share your experiment with those you wish to do so, by using the link that we provide. Even when your experiment is Hidden, we provide a unique link for your experiment that you can renew whenever you wish to. This will automatically cancel the previous link.
  • You can send personal invitations to people you know and might wish to take part in your research. For this, in the left hand side of your screen you select and unfold the category Experiment. From the available experiments, you select the one you wish to invite participants to. From the options that are available to you, select the option Participants. Then click on Invitation and select Personal. You will be asked to select a pseudonym for the participant you wish to invite. This pseudonym will only be visible to you and your collaborators, for this experiment. The pseudonym appears as a new entry to the list of Participants and a message will appear that will include the invitation to take part in the experiment. The invitation is accessible via the special page that corresponds to this participant and can be accessed by selecting the participant’s name from the list of Participant.
  • Via a group invitation. This could be more appropriate when the participants you wish to invite all share a common characteristic. When a participant is invited to an experiment and accepts the invitation, this is marked via an extra column that you set. The process of a group invitation is similar to the one described above. In this case, however, you select Group and New…. Then you are called to fill in the name and the value of the extra column that you will use to mark those participants. All group invitations are registered under the option Group and can be deleted or the link withdrawn at any given minute.
  • Finally, if the participant that you wish to invite is already participating in a different experiment in which you are a collaborator, you can access the special participant page and by selecting the option Invitation, you can send them an invitation for your experiment. If this participant participated in one of the experiments you have created, available experiments are all the experiments that you are a collaborator in and you have the right to invite participants. Otherwise, the experiments that are available to you are those experiments that correspond to the researcher in whose experiments your participant of interest took part and that you participate as a collaborator.
The general participant category
Any participant that is invited or participates in any of your experiments, is automatically registered in the general list Participants. This list exists so that all the participants that you have interacted with are available to you, irrespective of how many experiments they have participated in. By selecting a participant from that list, you can overview all the questionnaires and tasks that they have filled in and you also have the option to change their pseudonym or even to restrict your interaction with them either via messages or future participations. To visit this page, you go to the general list Participants or you can select the participant’s pseudonym from the page of each experiment.
The participants’ answers
All the answers of each participant, for any given experiment, are included in the special participant page of this experiment. In this page you can also find the answers that they have given to questionnaires or tasks that they have completed, in a chronological order. Every questionnaire or task that the participant has inputted answers to, appears as a separate field whose name corresponds to the task or questionnaire name that you have defined. The start time and competition time of each task element are also included in this field, along with the outputs of the rating function and the detailed answers of the participant to the questions of each questionnaire or the exact response to the task, as this was registered after task completion. You have the option to delete answers that concern specific elements or parts of elements. You can delete, edit or fabricate answers but you are strongly not advised to do so as this will disrupt the experimental flow for the participant that these actions concern.
In this page, you can also find the necessary demographics that correspond to each participant and are related to the experiment.
Personalizing experiments for participants
On the special page for each participant, in the experiment that you are interested in, you will find a field named Remaining. This field contains the total items of the experiment as well as the their order. From there, you will have the ability to alter the order and availability of the elements of the experiment for a specific participant.
Keywords
For every participant you can define specific Keywords of your choosing. Keywords are not restricted to a particular experiment but they are general and characterise a participant for all the experiments that they undertake. Same keywords can and must be used for more than one participant. The purpose of keywords is to facilitate the categorisation of the participants. They can also facilitate the search of participants who share the same common characteristics, the selection of specific data that are of interest to the researcher while additionally, there is the option to include these keywords as variables in your database.
Extra columns
The Extra columns are the same for all participants and are specific to each experiment. They can be defined through any participant page that concerns a particular experiment, they are filled in by the researcher and their aim is to define variables that are considered necessary for the data collection for a particular experiment. By defining an extra column as Grouping you create a new category of participants that appears when you expand the category Groups. This category can be found within Participant of the experiment that is located in the left-hand side of your screen.
Data
In the left hand side of your screen, you select the Experiments icon. From the available experiments, you select the one for which you wish to download the data. You then select Data from the options that are available to you. In the special data page for each experiment, you have options to download the data in a form of .csv file. Data will contain both raw answers and results of each item rating function. Also they will contain the requested demographics, the extra columns and the result of the evaluation fuction. Moreover, after the download of the answers, you will be able to download the media that the participants submitted as answers in form of zip archive files.
Answers
Depending on the type of the question in a particular questionnaire, the answer is saved in the database under a different manner:
  • If there are no answer choices (text, number or date), then the answers will be saved as text, irrespective of the type of answer that you have selected
  • If they are of the true/false type (/) then value 1 will correspond to the choice and number 2 to choice
  • If they are answers to multiple choice with one answer questions, then the serial number of the order of the option the participant chose to answer these questions will be saved, irrespective of the order with which the options appear to the participants. In this case, the number 1 will correspond to the first choice, etc. If details were provided, the option number is followed by space (' ') and the text with the details {choice_no} {details}
  • If they are answers to multiple choice with multiple answers questions, then all the answers - 1 for false () or 2 for true () - to available options, separated by comma (',') will be saved {answer_to_option_1},{answer_to_option_2},…{answer_to_option_N}
  • If answers are drawings, then the answer saved will be in the format of an array, as described in the relevant sector Options of question.
  • If answers are media, then the answer saved will be a text that will contain the name of the file representing the media as well as the description, if given, of it from the participant in tthe following format {filename},{description}.
For the experimental tasks, the answers that participants provide are saved as text.
Concerning the Completion time, is represented by a variable that has the name of the question it corresponds to and the suffix _time.
For every item that a Column prefix is set, each of its columns is preceded by the prefix followd by a dot ".", e.x. "t1.quest".
For every past repetition of an item, each of its columns is preceded by a number corresponding in the order of administration followd by a dot ".", e.x. "1.t1.quest". The columns of the last or selected as main, administered item have no prefix for repetition.
Keyowrds are saved in the database with the prefix _exp_keyword_, followed by the keyword itself.
The Extra columns are saved in the database with the prefix _exp_extracol_, followed by the name of the variable. The values that have been defined for each of variable, within a participant, are separated by "|".
The required demographic information are saved in the database with the prefix _exp_demo_ followed by the name of the variable that corresponds to each element. The names and the elements they correspond to are presented here:
  • birth_year: Birth year
  • birth_month: Birth month
  • birth_day: Birth day
  • hand: Dominant hand {1:'Left',2:'Right',3:'Both'}
  • color: Ethnic group {1:'White',2:'Black',3:'Hispanic',4:'Asian',5:'Other'}
  • sex: Sex {1:'Male',2:'Female'}
  • gender: Gender {1:'Male',2:'Female',3:'Other'}
  • nation_country: Nationality
  • grow_country: Country they were raised
  • grow_region: Region they were raised
  • grow_city: City they were raised
  • citizen_country: Country of residency
  • citizen_region: Region of residency
  • citizen_city: City of residency
  • height: Height
  • weight: Weight
  • bmi: Body mass index
  • education: Educational level {1:'Lower',2:'High school',3:'Technical school',4:'Undergraduate degree',5:'Graduate degree',6:'Phd',7:'Higher'}
  • maritstatus: Marital status {1:'Single',2:'Married',3:'Divorced',4:'Widowed'}
  • isparent: Have children {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_depression: Depression diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_bipolar: Bipolar disorder diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_psychosis: Psychotic disorder diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_asd: ASD diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_adhd: ADHD diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_anxiety: Anxiety disorder diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_ocd: OCD diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_ptsd: PTSD diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_eat: Eating disorder diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_sleepwake: Sleep disorder diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_sexual: Sexual disorder diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_genderdys: Gender dysphoria diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_impulse: Impulse disorder diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_substance: Substance abuse diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_dementia: Dementia diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_personality: Personality disorder diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
  • mental_paraphilic: Paraphilic disorder diagnosis {1:'N',2:'Y'}
Subscription & Coins
Data collection on our service is not free of charge. In order for a researcher to be able to collect data two conditions must be met, they must have an active subscription to the service and they must have coins available for data collection. Both of these are handled on the dedicated subscription and coins page, which is accessed via the menu located at the top and right of the researcher's page via the Buy' option.
Subscription
The subscription allows one to be able to collect data and have access to the data already collected, for 365 days. There is a minimum subscription cost but the final cost depends on space in bytes taken up by all of the researcher's data (participant responses, items, stored images, etc.) in the service at the time of subscription renewal. The more the latter increases, the higher the cost. For this and other reasons, it is considered good practice to use the service only as a temporary storage means and after collection the data to eventually be stored on third party media independent of the service.
The researcher has the possibility to renew the subscription from 60 days before its expiry. The expiry of the subscription leads to the exclusion of the researcher from the collected data but of course also from the possibility to collect new data. The renewal of such a subscription will require payment for the entire period during which the subscription was expired and the point in time from which it will be renewed will of course be the point in time at which it expired. When a subscription has expired for an extended period of time the service may automatically delete all collected data from the investigator's experiments. This option is also given to the researcher at the outset. In this way the start of the new subscription is reset to the present.
Coins
Coins are essentially the currency of the service and are redeemed for data. The researcher buys coins, and through the administration of his experiments, converts them into data. One, should budget the amount of coins necessary to have available, otherwise collection will not be possible.
The amount of coins needed for an experiment depends on the number of participants, the type of items administered in the experiment and the type of questions included in the questionnaires. A response to a task costs more than a response to a questionnaire's question and a response in form of an image costs more than a response to a multiple-choice question. Note that the cost of a participant's responses to an experiment depends on the answers they eventually give, not on the answers they could have given, and coins are redeemed at the time of each response.
As it is common in research for a participant not to complete the experimental procedure and as a result the collected responses are often not useful, in order to avoid the researcher incurring the cost in coins of these useless data, all participant responses are initially kept hidden. They are only revealed when the participant completes, even temporarily, the experimental procedure or at the researcher's request. As long as a participant's answers remain hidden, when the participant is deleted from the experiment the coins used to collect them are returned to the researcher.