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MediaLab User`s Guide, Version 2014

1. O PointLabel6 Editing Tips and Tricks QuickInfo The following describes how to use some of the editing features of MediaLab s new Experiment Editor Moving Around and Editing a Cel Copying a Single Cell 18 Drag 8 Drop Turbo CopyI7 amp Copy a Block of Cells 13 Copying an Entire Line Record 15 Copying Multiple Lines Records 18 Inserting Copied Lines Records 18 Filling Down amp Filling Right A Double Clicking Functions MA Relative vs Absolute Paths MA Expanding Question Wording Cells 1 MediaLab v2014 Selecting Cells to View MA Copying and Pasting to and from Other Applications 1 Editing Files Directly in Microsoft Access 20 Tips and Tricks Moving Around and Editing a Cell The arrow keys will allow you to navigate through the spreadsheet To select a cell in order to edit the contents press the Enter key When you are finished editing the cell press Enter again and the arrow keys will again let you navigate You can also leave a cell while editing it by using the Up or Down arrow keys To add a hard return line feed to your question wording do this in Details 3mode Copying a Single Cell To copy a single cell move to that cell select Copy Ctrl C then move to the desired target cell and select Paste Ctrl V Only entire cells may be copied amp pasted in the main overview spreadsheet To copy and paste only portions of cells do this in Details 38 mode Drag Drop
2. Also notice that we re using skip to values here The values in the Skip To field allow MediaLab v2014 you to skip a subject to any subsequent questionnaire item by entering the item name in the Skip To field Below you can see the Details for the next three questions rse10 rsel1 and rse12 you may have to scroll down To illustrate say we want people who disagree with rse10 to answer question rse11 and we want those who agree to rse10 to answer question rse12 To do this we enter rse12 in the Skip To field of the agree responses in rse10 If the subject agrees to rse10 they will be skipped to rse12 otherwise they will continue on to question rse11 Scroll down here to see the details of rsel1 See how the subject is unconditionally skipped to rse13 This ensures that they will not get rse12 which was designed for those agreed to rse10 If that s confusing try going back and forth using the Go Back button trying the different combinations to see how it works You ll see that depending on what you answer to rse10 you will get only rse11 ORrsei2 Instead of a single item you could also have entire blocks of items designed for a particular response Multiple Response Item Sometimes you may want a subject to be able to check more than one response That is when you can use the multiple response item 4 instead of the scale item It works exactly like a scale response except that MediaLab will allow multiple buttons to be checked I
3. time stamp optional By entering as a parameter for any item in a questionnaire you can have MediaLab write a time stamp at the onset of that item in order to keep track of events in real time When you do this a time stamp will be appended to a file called timestamps csv located in the Data folder Each time stamp will include the Subject ID the variable name the time at which the item started e g 12 33 22 the milliseconds elapsed from the beginning of the experiment and the number of milliseconds passed since the last timestamp The timestamp function can be used with all item types command line arguments optional For executables that allow for command line arguments you can specify the arguments you want to send with the c parameter Just type in the arguments preceded by a c e g c myargument Follow any arguments with max and the application will be run in a maximized window e g cmax or q myarguments max For other item types an executable file may be launched at the start of the item by adding a c parameter followed by the file name For example p7 cmyprog exe in the MediaLab v2014 Parameter s field would cause myprog exe to launch at the start of a 7pt scale response This is especially useful for programs that should run silently in the background as MediaLab will not attempt to keep the program visually in the foreground unless it is launched via the regular Executable item 44 type duration for
4. You can also now include lt specify gt in the text label of any response option This will not be displayed to the subject but will cause MediaLab to prompt subjects to enter a text response This is handy in cases where you want to provide an alternative such as other For example if you wanted the seventh option to be other and you wanted subjects to specify what other means then enter other lt specify gt for the text label The actual text response will be written to the data file instead of whether or not the item was selected If you choose to use this feature you should select the Write As Text option for the variable since a numeric variable in SPSS will not be able to store a text response Multiple Response items support all of the same optional parameters as Scale Responses 5A below On Line Rating The on line rating feature allows you to capture continuous response data from subjects over the course of an entire item e g movie sound file timed image or document Using either a joystick default if one is connected or the left and right arrow keys subjects will be asked to give continuous rating feedback for the duration of the item following the on line rating item All you need to do is set the number of scale points for the rating scale and the text labels for the scale points use none to leave a label blank When the subsequent item starts MediaLab will present the online rating scale which subjects can
5. Syntax and Data 70 Z Variable Names 56 a Support 109 Zip Files 76 Supporting Applications 84 System Requirements 4 System Settings 4 T Target Question q Parameter 62 Task bar 4 Text Labels 67 Thought Listing 51 Thought Listing Parameters 57 Thought Rating Parameters 57 Timestamp Parameter 57 74 Trouble Shooting 109 TTL Signal Parameter 62 TXT Data Files 70 U Unique Machine Code 84 Use Alternate Data File 83 V Variable Names 56 76 Video see Movie 47 Voice Response 51 Parameters 57 Volume Speaker 106 WwW WebTracker 52 Width w Parameter que 63 Word Document Experiment File 26 On the fly Editing 83 Parameters exp 31 Parameters que 57 Questionnaire Item 52 Write Data as Text 69 Write Reaction Time 69 1995 2014 Empirisoft Corporation
6. Finally you can place one substitute txt file in the Styles folder which will affect all experiments and another in your experiment folder which will affect only that experiment If the same message IDs are contained in both locations priority is given to those in the experiment folder Using an AutoStart File to Automate Subject and Condition IDs By default each time you run a MediaLab experiment you need to enter a subject ID and condition You can automate this process by using an AutoStart file All you have to do is generate a text list of subject IDs and conditions and call it autostart txt and place it in your experiment folder For example B autostart bd Notepad O x File Edit Format View Help pe gt 1 22 3 3 4 4 5 1 6 2 7 3 8 4 9 1 1 When you run the experiment MediaLab checks to see if an autostart txt file exists in the same folder If it does exist then it automatically runs the next subject ID and condition on the list Ifit doesn t then you will be prompted for the subject ID and condition as usual MediaLab will mark the subject ID condition with a so it knows where to start next time Following the session MediaLab will ask if you want to run the next session if you say yes it automatically gets the next subject ID and condition from the list and runs it This way you can run sessions all day on multiple computers and never have to enter a subject ID or condit
7. MediaLab will play most video files that are supported by the Windows Media Player Purpose If you would like a video played in the background simply type in or select the name of the video file in this field Advanced Hints By default the backvideo will be centered on the screen and play at its encoded size To specify the location of the backvideo use the top and left parameters 32 in parentheses after the file name For example myvideo bmp t50 200 will place the backvideo 50 pixels from the top and 200 pixel from the left To specify the size of the backvideo use the width parameterl 32 the height will automatically be adjusted proportionally For example myvideo bmp w640 will play the video at a resolution of 640x480 pixels A number of special width values are also available e g quarter screen half screen full screen 4 9 Randomize Within Groups QuickInfo Randomly orders and presents all files sharing the same RWG value Value Any positive integer value Purpose To randomly order and present certain files in your experiment assign the files you want to have randomized with the same number in this field For example if you have five files you want randomized assign them each an RWG value of 1 The five files will be randomly presented in the five positions they occupy in the experiment All remaining files will be presented in their normal positions as long as their RWG value is either 0 or none You ca
8. Otherwise the image will appear as it s default size For example a 300 pixel wide image will appear smaller when you use higher screen resolutions However if you explicitly define the size using the height and width parameters then it will appear according to the MediaLab scaling system You can find more information about this in the following sections of the manual Parameters Questionnaire Files T5A Parameters Experiment Files 3h The most common resolutions are 640x480 800x600 and 1024x768 The first number tells you the number of pixels that are displayed across your screen and the second number tells you the number that are displayed down your screen You can determine and or set the resolution of your display by right clicking on your desktop and selecting Properties gt Display MediaLab tries to use a resolution independent scale so that your experiments will look the same no matter what resolution you run in Some differences can not be avoided however To see what the scale is on your particular system choose Show Location Points from the Help menu in MediaLab By right clicking on your desktop and choosing Settings you can see if your system is set to use large or small fonts In 640x480 mode only small fonts are available At greater resolutions you may optionally choose large fonts This impacts on window sizes as well Larger fonts result in larger windows In our testing MediaLab has worked well in most resolutions with
9. To get ratings of an image use a Scale Response and use the image as a background image Images by default appear in their actual dimensions Optionally you can use the height and width parameters to specify the image display size Note that if you size an image using the height and width parameters 63 you need to also specify the top and left parameters 60 otherwise it will appear in the top left corner of the screen by default Note that size and location parameters vary slight depending on your display settings MediaLab provides a guide for understanding these values in the Help menu with an option called Show Location Points 100 200 300 400 500 60 100 Screen locations may vary depending on the display settings e g resolution and small vs large fonts For the current screen settings on this computer these location guides indicate 200 where media will be located on the screen when you use the t op and or left parameters for a given item in your questionnaire or experiment See help on Parameters for more information on 300 placing items See also Sizing Videos and Images in the help menu e g This image is located with a t op parameter of 100 and a I eft parameter of 200 400 Advanced Hints BMP files will load faster than JPG or GIF formats because they do not have to first decompress Also 256 8 bit color images will load much faster than images encoded with thousands or millions of colors Mos
10. Y mul Sort Sorts the items in the questions by their position values The Sort button makes life a little easier by automatically reordering all of the items in your questionnaire so that you need not worry about where you are placing any one item at any given time When MediaLab sorts the questionnaire items it will reorder them by their ordinal position If you forget to do this MediaLab will do it automatically when you exit You can manually sort whenever and as often as you like by clicking the Sort button Hint To add a new item between two existing items e g at positions 2 and 3 assign ita position value between these values e g 2 5 and then click the Sort button After sorting you can automatically renumber all of your items with sequential integers by clicking the Renumber button Renumber Renumbers the position 64 values in the questionnaire with sequential integer values The renumber button cleans up your position numbering by replacing the values with sequential integers The first item will get a position value of 1 the second will get a 2 and so forth This is not a necessary operation and is provided mainly for the purpose of aesthetics and to help you know that you have the correct number of items your questionnaire Hint If your items are out of order be sure to sort 3A before you renumber MediaLab v2014 Print See Experiment Editor Printing 16 Help Starts the interactive h
11. an Excel Spreadsheet a Flash Presentation etc Of course this depends on how cooperative the other programis but it s definitely worth checking if you re curious See also Appendix A Unusual Task Specific Features for a few functions that are task specific 5 9 Item Wording File QuickInfo Identifies the question wording for the questionnaire item type being presented Value as Question Wording Use Question Wording File Name field to create the question wording for the following item types Fill in the blank Instructions MediaLab v2014 Multiple Response Recall Listing Scale Response Thought listing Thought Rating Hints as Question Wording Click Details for a more flexible editing space A very simple solution for more elaborate or formatted instructions is to simply insert them in a html word or word perfect document and present that as its own item Advanced Hints as Question Wording If you want more formatting control over question wording you can insert HTML anywhere on any question item by specifying an HTML file or URL in the BackGroundl 34 field for the item This way you can create whatever you like and present it in place of or in addition to the usual instruction text Note that you must specify the area in the which the HTML should appear or it may hide other parts of the question item You can insert the value of a subject s prior response to any fill in the blank or scale response
12. enter p6 in the Parameter s field This will allow you to enter those 6 items in the text labels area Enter any text you like To have participants rank images enter the name of each image file in a text label field For examples of ranking standard and with images visit our Experiment Sharing area at support empirisoft com That is all that s necessary for a ranking item but there are a number of formatting options For example you may choose to have an instruction window pop up at the start of the item You can do so by entering text in the Question Wording File Name field for the item Subjects will be able to bring these instructions up again at any time by clicking the Instructions label at the bottom of the screen You can display labels at the top and bottom of the ranking area such as Most Important and Least Important so that subjects know which items go toward the top and which go toward the bottom To do so enter these labels in the Question Wording File Name field after the instructions if any like this Most Important Least Important If you don t have any question wording then you can simply type the labels in the question wording field preceded by an equals sign By default the ranking items will be as wide as they need to be to fit on one line Long words and phrases will consequently be wider than short words and phrases If you have entire sentences being ranked you may find they are too wide There are two w
13. g lt ml bg w gt BackSound BackVideo Append parameters if desired t l h W g lt ml bg w gt Text Label 1 12 Replace x with option number e g lt ml text7 gt lt ml h gt lt ml k gt lt ml l gt lt ml m gt lt ml n gt lt ml o gt lt ml p gt lt ml q gt lt ml r gt lt ml s gt lt ml t gt lt ml ttl gt height key left position mask number of thoughts to take question wording onset number of scale points 1 12 target question for thought rating range spacing top position send ttl signal MediaLab v2014 lt ml labelx gt Button Label lt ml w gt width 1 12 Replace x with option number e g lt ml label7 gt lt ml skiptox gt SkipTo Value lt ml x gt password 1 12 Replace required to x with option continue number e g lt ml skipto10 gt lt ml goback gt Whether GoBack is allowed True False lt gt Any variable from responses xls Specify variable in angular brackets e g lt varl gt All of the variables above may be directly substituted into your HTML file For example if the question wording in you HTML were Please choose from one of the lt ml p gt alternatives and you had used the parameter p5 the question wording would appear as Please choose from one of the 5 alternatives The code to display an image in HTML may look like this lt img src mypic jpg gt Inst
14. has not yet completed In contrast files in Backsounds field continue until completion overlapping subsequent items or until another file in a different Backsounds field is encountered Thus Sounds items and the Backsounds field in other items can be used strategically to accomplish different effects Note that if you need to stop a file in the Backsounds field upon item completion you can simply insert silence wav from the Utilities folder in the MediaLab program files in the Backsounds field for the subsequent item It is a short silent sound file that will cancel any currently playing BackSound 5 5 5 6 BackVideo QuickInfo Display a video in the background as the current item is presented Value By default MediaLab will play any video file that is supported by the Windows Media Player This typically includes mpg avi asf wmv dat and mpv video formats Purpose In questionnaire files all item types except executables DirectRT and Inquisit sessions support the Backvideos field If you would like a video played in the background simply type in the name of the video file in the Backvideos field of the item Advanced Hints By default the file in the Backvideos field will be centered on the screen and play at its encoded size To specify the location of the backvideo use the top and left parameters ed in parentheses after the file name For example myvideo bmp t50 200 will place the backvideo 50 pixels from
15. screen as stimuli use them in skip patterns 2 or in post session reports a Create and optionally print summary reports M from each session with graphs summary data scale scores MediaLab v2014 Embed your own or third party programs 44 within an experiment or questionnaire Create your own custom questionnaire items 88 using standard HTML forms MediaLab will intercept the posted data Run DirectRT 43 or Inquisit 4A sessions from within your MediaLab experiment Create multiple custom preference settings s4 with choices of fonts and display colors Context sensitive help such that pressing F1 at any time will help you with what you are currently doing Option of on the fly editingls3 of Word and WordPerfect documents edit them as you run through your experiment Resolution Independentl 1 Compatible with screen displays from 640x480 to 1600x1200 and beyond Easy to use intuitive interface no programming code necessary for all but custom itemsT 88 Compatible with most non English fonts 83 e g Japanese Chinese Arabic Greek Customize all standard feedback messages 8 and or translate into alternate languages Optionally run experiments from a CD ROM or Serverl on LAN Communicate with external equipment 82 for trial synchronization e g psychophys equipment Receive input from external devices 10A such reponse boxes and precision keyboards Run sessions automaticallyl 9 from other progra
16. 125 The user will be prompted to entera number within that range if they fail to do so You can optionally combine this with the mask parameterl6 to provide the appropriate number of spaces for the number You can also add a range parameter sA to multiple response items 4 to specify a minimum and or maximum number of responses to take For example p5 r1 3 would require that the subject choose at least 1 and no more than 3 of the 5 options spacing optional For items that use response buttons i e scale responses multiple responses and thought ratings you can use the spacing parameter to create more space for options with lots of text or if you re using an html file for your labels For example if you want to double space your response options use the parameter s2 or s3 to triple space or s1 5 to add a half space and so on Values from 1 to 5 including decimals are permitted This will produce evenly spaced response options with as many extra lines per item as you need Importantly you can do this on an item by item basis the default of course is single space if you don t specify the space parameter For fill in the blank items 44 you can use the Space parameter to tell MediaLab how many lines of text you want to allow For example a parameter of s3 will provide three lines of text instead of one the default Note that if you specify more than 1 line the Enter key will not send the subject to the next item but r
17. 50 The following are descriptions of the various item types that can be included ina MediaLab questionnaire See also information on how to set parameters 5 Custom Can t find what you need MediaLab now allows you to create your own custom item types using Visual Basic Visual C or other development platforms using the MediaLab ActiveX control You can reuse your custom item type in other experiments or share it with others Data are integrated with MediaLab s regular data files Limited only by your imagination ok and maybe a little programming ability See Creating Custom Item Types 88 for more information DirectRT To embed a DirectRT session within your questionnaire simply select the DirectRT item type and enter the name of the input file in the File field MediaLab will pass the current subject and condition values to DirectRT which will run the session and then pass control back to MediaLab when it s finished Note DirectRT takes a few moments to start up and shut down It s generally not a good idea to place two DirectRT sessions directly back to back in your questionnaire Instead try separating the sessions with a simple Instruction item e g that says Click Continue to proceed See DirectRT for more details on how to obtain DirectRT and what you can do with it Note that MediaLab can save certain responses for later use as stimuli in a DirectRT session 10 MediaLab v2014 Essay An essay item allows subjects
18. Early 10 Randomize Between Groups RBG 65 Randomize Within Groups RWG 64 Ranking 49 Recall List 49 Running 9 Scale Response 50 Skip To 66 Sound File 50 Text Labels 67 Thought Listing 51 Thought Rating 51 Voice Response 51 WebTracker 52 Word Document 52 Write Data as Text 69 Write Reaction Time 69 Write to Data File 68 Quickstyle Parameter 57 QuickStyles 84 Quitting Early 10 R Randomization MediaLab v2014 Present nofxitems 66 RBG exp 30 RBG que 65 RWG Experiment Files 29 RWG que 64 Tracking Presentation Order 74 Randomize Between Groups exp 30 Randomize Between Groups que 65 Randomize Within Groups exp 29 Randomize Within Groups que 64 Range r Parameter 31 57 62 Ranking 49 Parameters 57 Recall List 49 Parameters 57 Recoding Data 74 Reinstalling 4 Relative vs Absolute Paths 104 Response Times Variable Names 56 Running a Session 9 S Sample Experiments 76 SAS 73 SAV Data Files 70 Saving Preferences 84 Scale Response 50 Parameters 57 Screen Resolution 4 Secondary Task 106 Secret Keys 10 Serial Data 107 Setup MediaLab 4 Skip To 66 Sound BackSound exp 28 BackSound que 40 Experiment File 26 Parameters exp 31 Parameters que 57 Questionnaire Files 50 Sound Effects MediaLab 84 Spacing s Parameter 31 57 62 Speaker Volume 106 Speaker Volume Sound 107 Spell Checking 20 1995 2014 Empirisoft Corporation SPSS 73
19. Excel or similar spreadsheet program It will indicate the subject and condition IDs and give you the time in milliseconds from the start of the essay for each time the key was hit left position top position optional These parameters allow you to place an image text or video exactly where you want it by specifying the top left corner of its position relative to the top left corner of the MediaLab window e g t150 200 You can also express location and size parameters as a percentage of the screen For example 3 t 25 would be a point 30 percent across the screen from the left and 25 percent down To use percentages simply use a value less than 1 and greater than 0 To determine values appropriate for your display select Showing Location Points under the main MediaLab Help menu The left and top parameters can also specify the left and top position of the essay fill in the blank and thought listing text boxes as well as the text presented in instruction items You can also use the top parameter to specify the location of the first button when using scale responses multiple responses and thought ratings e g when you need more room for question wording mask optional You can use the mask parameter to specify the number of characters allowed in a fill in the blank item as well as whether each is fixed or free For example the parameter m will provide five blanks that are free to be filled by any character The
20. If the file is located in the same folder as your experiment file then you can simply enter the name of the file e g myimage bmp If the file is located in a subfolder that is located in the same folder as your experiment files then you can enter the name of the subfolder followed by the name of the file e g images myimage bmp Otherwise you need to specify the full path and name of the file you want to present e g c mypictures myimage bmp The advantage of placing the file in the experiment directory ora subfolder is that the experiment folder can then be moved to a different place and you won t have to worry about checking path names e g c d etc Do not place any parameter 5 values in the File Name field Any relevant parameters should go in the Parameter s field Parameters should follow the filename only for files in the Backgrounds 3 Backsounds 40 and Backvideos 4 fields If you specify a file name ending with txt for a scale response or fill in the blank item the subject s response to the question will be written to that text file preceded by a This is so that other programs you may want to run during the session have the option of reading and acting on this information It was particularly intended for use with DirectRT so that responses provided by subjects could be used as stimuli in an embedded DirectRT session GoBack QuickInfo If checked an option will be provided to participants to retur
21. MediaLab uses during experimental sessions Select Edit Preferences gt Font amp Colors You can set fonts and colors separately for windows that display text provided by you and for windows that allow subject input On the fly Editing of Word Documents If this option is checked then you can edit Word or WordPerfect documents as you run through the experiment simply by double clicking on them You may want to disable this when you are running actual subjects Hide MediaLab Rats For the politically correct and the phobic you can choose to have MediaLab hide the rats from the main window with this option For the phobic note the opportunity here to start your systematic desensitization Disable System Key Sequences Selecting this option will disable any key sequences 10 that would allow participants to explore your computer or otherwise interfere with your experimental session The key sequences such as ALT TAB CTRL ALT DELETE and CTRL ESC will be re enabled after the session is over Caution should be used here such that you have fully tested your experiment before setting this option If for any reason the program locks up while these system keys are disabled you would have to turn the computer off and restart it e g since CTRL ALT DELETE would not be an option for closing the program Note that this function may not work on Windows XP Double Click to close MediaLab A small convenience that allows you to double click on t
22. Please enter a number from fill in the blank 106 Please inform the experimenter that you have completed this portion of the session 107 The time allowed for this section of the study is over Press enter to continue timed 108 Please press ENTER only after typing a response Press ENTER to continue now tho 109 The time allowed for this question has finished Press Enter to continue thought list WZ And copy them to substitute txt where you can change them to anything you like B substitute bat Notepad File Edit Format View Help 103 What kind of answer is that fill in the blank 104 Does what you typed look like a number fill in the blank 106 Usted esta libre Usted va a casa y usted tiene una bebida end of session If you were to do that then these messages 103 104 106 would be used instead of those contained in the message txt file Here s how it works Every time MediaLab starts an experiment it accesses the messages it will use from the main messages txt It will then look in the Styles folder for a file called substitute txt If it finds it it will read your custom translated messages and substitute them in the experiment Note that if you place the substitute txt file in the Styles folder then all experiments will use the substitute messages If you want to substitute messages ina particular experiment then simply place the substitute txt file in your experiment folder
23. a variable responses xls files should not have any empty rows on the main page MediaLab executes skips by skipping over items until the desired item is found This means that if you tell MediaLab to skip to a variable that doesn t exist then the session will end Using a responses xlis file will have no impact on your primary data files i e calculated variables are just for use during the experiment and are saved only in the post session report i e in the reports folder see above In addition to saving a copy of the responses xis file under the subject s ID in the data reports folder MediaLab will also save a copy as currentsession xls in the same folder This is a temporary file reflecting the responses of the most recent participant in the experiment Currently the MediaLab GoBack function is disabled if calculated skips are involved See Also Advanced Features Overview 93 QuickInfo Here are a few miscellaneous tips that don t easily fit elsewhere in this guide Specifying File Paths A Sizing Images and Movies 15 Miscellaneous Featuresl 10 5 Using Responses from MediaLab as Stimuli in DirectRT 05 Adjusting Speaker Volume Automatically During Session 107 Secondary Tasks Requiring Participants to Respond to Probes o Sending and Receiving Serial Data 10h Trouble Shooting Tips 11 1 Specifying File Paths When you tell MediaLab to present a file e g an image a sound a movie a questionna
24. alignment of the text By default it will be left aligned For right alignment add ai For center alignment add a2 e g The quick brown fox jumped off the roof param a1 will be right aligned The quick brown fox jumped off the roof param a2 t 5 will center the sentence horizontally on the screen and the top of the text will be located 50 of the way down the screen s 5 10 Labels QuickInfo For scale response multiple response thought rating and online rating item types the buttons labels determine what is shown on the buttons when that item is displayed onscreen The default labels are the numbers from 1 to 12 starting with the top response option These values can be changed to whatever you want e g A B C 1 2 3 etc When using the keyboard these numbers correspond to what number key 1 9 for the first 9 options and or function key F1 F12 for any of the 12 options can be pressed to select a button However any button can be selected using a mouse to move the cursor to the desired button and left clicking it Advanced Hints You can modify the the size format and location of response options and buttons using the Text Label 67 field to the right of the Label field On scale responses and thought ratings the default value written to the data file is always the ordinal value of the response option For example if the first option is chosen then a 1 is written to the data file no matter what is
25. and run a single questionnaire If you want to test or run a single a questionnaire or just see what it looks like you can click on Select and Run a Single Questionnaire MediaLab will automatically create a single item experiment file 6 and run it All data files will be located in the usual place but will be named after the questionnaire e g self esteem_que csv Run the most recently executed session This choice will execute the experiment or questionnaire most recently run on the machine The key sequence Ctrl R will perform the same function This command is handy when multiple participants are being run back to back in the same session Select from the 5 most recently run sessions MediaLab keeps track of the five most recently run sessions and displays them in the Run menu Clicking on any one of them will run the selected session assuming that the displayed pathway is accurate Running an Experiment from a CD ROM By default MediaLab writes data to the same folder that contains the experiment files This prevents you from running experiments off of a CD ROM since you can t write data to a read only CD ROM To accomplish this you can specify an alternate data folder in your preferences file 83 So long as the alternate data folder is one to which MediaLab can write the data then running the experiment off a CD is no problem Running Experiments Over a Network In the same way that you can write data to a folder on another com
26. background image to be displayed with the top left corner located at the top left corner of the MediaLab window specify the background file as myimage bmp t1 11 MediaLab v2014 5 14 Position QuickInfo Identifies the order in which items are presented in the questionnaire Values Any number Decimal values are allowed Purpose This field determines the order of the items in the questionnaire file MediaLab will automatically sort the items in the questionnaire by these values when you close the file You can also manually sort the items at any time using the Sortl 3A button Hints To add a new item between two existing items e g 2 and 3 assign it a position value between the values of the two existing items e g 2 5 and then click the Sort button After sorting you can automatically renumber all of your items as sequential integers by clicking the Renumberl3A button 5 15 Randomize Within Groups QuickInfo MediaLab will randomly order and present all items sharing the same RWG value Value Any positive integer value Purpose You may wish to randomly order and present certain items in your questionnaire file To do this assign the same RWG value to all the items you want to have randomized with each other For example if you have five items you want randomized assign them each a 1 in the RWG field of each item The five items will be randomly presented in the five positions they occupy in the questionnai
27. both large and small fonts 11 3 Miscellaneous Features These features are documented here despite the fact that not as commonly used as the others discussed in this manual Sometimes when people get customizations to MediaLab done they are very useful to a lot of other users and so they get worked into the manual Other times well they ll probably gather some dust But just in case somebody else might be able to benefit from them here they are Using Responses from MediaLab as Stimuli in DirectRT At some point you may want to use a subject s answer to a scale responsel 5 or fill in the blank 42 item as a stimulus in DirectRT For example in MediaLab you could ask a series of fill in the blank items asking subjects to enter foods that they like Or you might ask them to indicate their race using a scale response Then in a DirectRT session you might want to display these responses as stimuli e g as primes or targets in a priming study For fill in the blanks and scale responses you can specify a file name ending with txt in the File Namel4 field to have MediaLab save the response in the file you specify This will cause MediaLab to save the subject s response preceded with a symbol so that DirectRT will recognize that it is text for display purposes Then in DirectRT you can specify that this text be displayed as a stimulus by using the 8 symbol which tells DirectRT to read a single line stimulus from a text file So if you
28. browser Name three good movies To see this sample is action go to C MediaLab Samples Sample5 custom items myTextBox4 multiple variables An alternative Dummy Variables Instead of adding a parameter you can create dummy variables in your experiment that act as placeholders for data with matching variable names To do so create an additional Custom item in any questionnaire and give it whatever variable name you like but do not give it a filename When MediaLab sees that you have listed a Custom item with no file name indicated it will understand that this item is merely a placeholder for a variable being collected in some other Custom item When recognized as a placeholder or dummy variable such items will be skipped during the experimental session This method provides a nice way of capturing data from questions or surveys where you can not control the variable names that are used in the existing HTML forms For example if you look at the source code for a survey on the internet and see that you want to save two variables called age and sex from the many that are being posted you can include the survey as a Custom item and then add age and sex as two dummy variables in your experiment In the following example code the lt table gt tag along with cell markers are used in order to maintain an orderly look via rows lt tr gt and columns lt td gt lt form method post gt lt table gt lt tr gt lt td gt What is you
29. can display files located on any computer on your network as long as the drive has been mapped on the system running MediaLab For example a hard drive on another computer may be mapped on your system as h or s etc If you are new to mapping ask your network administrator about mapping the drives of other machines on your network or refer to the instructions from Microsoft about mapping in Windows Once the drive is mapped you can refer to files on that drive just as you would local files e g h myfiles myfile bmp See also Running Experiments Over a Networkl e for details on how to run an entire experiment from another machine It s generally not a good idea to place two DirectRT sessions directly back to back in your experiment because each DirectRT session requires a few seconds for one session to end and the next to begin Instead try separating the sessions with a simple instruction screen of some type 4 6 BackGround QuickInfo Display an image in the background as the current file is presented Value Any image file with a bmp jpg or gif extension Purpose If you would like an image displayed in the background simply type in or select the name of the image file in this field MediaLab v2014 Advanced Hints You can specify the location of the background image in the same way as you do for the primary image using parameter 34 values This can be useful if you want to present two images one as the
30. can save it as a sav file analyze it immediately or export it into almost any other database format How do I get Excel to read the data If your experiment file was named experi then also written to the Data folder will be a file called experi csv This file will have all your data in a format that Excel can read Just open this file with Excel and it will automatically read in the data variable formats and variable names You can then save the file as an xls file readable by almost any stats package Be careful though Excel can only read 255 variables If you have more variables than that including response times then you may want to have SPSS read in your file How do I get SAS and other data analysis packages to read the data Most stats package will have the capability to read the csv file this is the comma delimited file in the data folder of your experiment directory and transform it into format MediaLab v2014 compatible with itself If not have Excel read the csv file and then have your stats package read the Excel file Some will require you to save the Excel file in an earlier version e g as an Excel 2003 worksheet How do I determine the order in which random items were presented There is routine that keeps track of the actual presentation order of everything e g of files and questionnaire items that are presented randomly After completely running an experiment file in Medialab you can find a log f
31. changes to your experiment you often change the structure of your data This can cause confusion in your data because one subject s data are always appended to the last Consequently it is always a good idea to clear your data folder after making changes to your study If the existing data are important then back them up and merge them laterl 73 with the new data If they are not important e g they are just test files then you can click the Clear Data button when entering the subject and condition IDs after selecting a file to run 9 Subject ID Condition T Edit Mode Moi 7 Clear Data f Help This will delete everything in your data folder resulting in a clean start Note that some people get very nervous about having this button so accessible If that s you there is a way to disable it on the Preferences menu simply click Disable Clear Data Note that MediaLab will attempt to send cleared data to the Windows Recycle Bin if the experiment is stored locally i e as opposed to on a network drive How do I create a vertical format data file Occasionally you may want to access your MediaLab data in a vertical format i e one variable per row rather than the usual horizontal format i e all data for each subject located in a single row Located in the Utilities folder is a file called vertical mdb This file is a blank Access database This file can be copied into the ByVariablenamel7 subfolder of any experiment you
32. in the Label field for that button For multiple response items a button that is chosen and shows a check mark when the Continue button is pressed will be recorded as 1 while buttons that are not chosen are recorded as 0 For all of these item types you can specify an alternate value to record in the data file for any given response option by placing it in squiggly brackets after the text label like so strongly disagree 2 4 2 disagree 1 3 neutral 0 none 4 agree 1 none 5 strongly agree 2 none Starting with the strongly disagree option and going down the list these options will now be recorded as 2 1 O 1 and 2 respectively Note that the value can be text or numeric although numeric is recommended If you use text make sure the Write as Text s option is checked for the item Input via Serial Port As an alternative to keyboard input you can receive input from external devices such as response boxes via the serial port To do so you just need to create a file called comport txt in your experiment folder and copy the following text into it MediaLab v2014 comPort baudRate parity dataBit stopBit Lp LIZ2007 10 8 pod input code 1 255 response value 1 12 Ipi Y g r Y Daw Ww NH DH oa amp Ww NH Y You should not modify the first or third line The second line represents the values of the variables listed on the first line You can change any of these as necessary The
33. into Details mode If the item type is a file then double clicking on the FileName or QuestionWording column will immediately open up a file browser window so you can select your file If you select Cancel this will return you to Edit mode so you can manually edit the cell Double clicking on the BackGround BackSound and BackVideo columns will also immediately open a file browser window so you can choose an appropriate file type Relative vs Absolute Paths To use Absolute or Relative default paths select the appropriate option from the Options Menu What does this mean When you select files using the file browser you can opt to have it return the entire aka absolute path of the file e g c experiments steve exp1 images image1 bmp or the path relative to the experiment e g images image1 bmp Relative paths are recommended because the experiment folder e g in this case exp1 can be moved anywhere on any computer and in any folder and MediaLab will know where to find the file The only time an absolute path is necessary is when the desired file is not located somewhere within the experiment folder However if you are using Relative Paths the editor will enter an absolute path if this is the case Expanding Question Wording Cells When a question wording cell uses multiple lines the cell will expand to show this when you click on it If you would like to see all such cells expanded at the same time select QuestionWording C
34. it see below under Advanced Hints To do this use the top t left 1 60 height h and width w 63 parameters For example if you have some specially formatted instructions in an HTML file that you want to use fora scale response you could you could enter instructions htm t50 150 w400 h150 in the BackGround field for that item This defines an area for the html to appear that will not cover the buttons and labels of the scale response Advanced Hints You can specify the location of the background image in the same way as you do fora primary image using parameter 5A values This can be useful if you want to present two images one as the main and one as the background or to present an image at the MediaLab v2014 same time as a question item e g to get judgments of the image To specify the location of the background image use the top and left parameters 6 in parentheses after the file name For example myimage bmp t50 1200 will place the background image 50 pixels from the top and 200 pixel from the left If you want to present images within html Word or Word Perfect documents you can simply insert them into the html Word or WordPerfect files themselves Inserting some html with pop up links in your background can allow your participants to click a link on the question page to see a message helpful hints instructions translations or any other text elaboration 5 4 BackSound QuickInfo Play a wave wav
35. like If MediaLab finds this file after a session is complete it will output all of the data into three columns subject varname value of the vertical table MediaLab will always append data to whatever data already exist in the file and this function will be in addition to all of the usual data file formats To maximize compatibility this file is in Access 97 format consequently it is readable by all versions of Access A simple test of this function would be to copy the vertical mdb file into the ByVariablename 7 subfolder in your experiment folder and run that sample you should find the results stored in that file after you run the session This is also a handy way to programmatically access data immediately after a session for use in other programs MediaLab v2014 How to save data from a custom item made with HTML See Custom Items se Can I use Long Variable Names The limit in MediaLab for variable names is 60 characters Keep in mind though that some statistical packages and spreadsheet applications may still have difficulty working with longer variable names Be sure to view and analyze some practice data before going too crazy with this feature Inserting variables into question wording and response options You can insert variables from the data files into the question wording and response options by using lt variablename gt For example if you have variables in your data file called friendi and friend2 you could
36. move up or down by using the joystick or arrow keys MediaLab will take 10 samples every second and average these to provide a value for that second MediaLab will continue doing so for the duration of the item and then write these values to a separate data file which will be named after the item being rated For example if you have subjects perform an online rating of a movie item called moviel then all the online data will be stored in a file called movie1_online csv This file can be opened in Excel or other spreadsheet application for viewing Note that there is also a viewer included in the Utilities folder called OnLineViewer You can open any online output file to view the data plotted as a continuous graph with this program You can also select by subject by condition and you can set the time interval you want to see plotted At any time you can also copy the plotted values and paste them into Excel or another spreadsheet for further manipulation or graphing There is also a joystick calibration program located in the Utilities folder as well PowerPoint Show Presents a Microsoft PowerPoint show This is an ideal way to present impressively formatted sequential display screens Using PowerPoint simply create a slide show and then save the file as a PowerPoint show pps format Then enter the filename in the Experiment editor in the position and condition s you want it to occur or enter it as an item within a questionnaire PowerPoin
37. needs These two sets are called ByQuestionnaire and ByVariablename and can be found in the Data subfolder of your experiment Here is the difference between the folders By Questionnaire The ByQuestionnaire data folder organizes your data by questionnaire hence the name Before writing the data MediaLab alphabetically orders all of the questionnaires in the experiment MediaLab then writes all of the data for each variable in the first questionnaire the second questionnaire and so forth If a subject did not receive a particular questionnaire in their condition then missing values are written Thus the final data file lists variables sorted first by the alphaabetical order of the names of the questionnaire files used and then by the order of the items as they were programmed into the questionnaire file This results in a constant data format no matter which questionnaires a subject received and the order in which they were administered ByVariablename In contrast the ByVariablename data folder organizes your data by variable names Before writing the data MediaLab goes through all of the questionnaires in your experiment and alphabetically orders all of the variable names It then proceeds to write the data for all of the variables in this order regardless of the questionnaire in which they occurred Remember that the variables will be in alphabetical order so q10 would end up following q9 If you are using a naming system like that y
38. of the MediaLab Experiment Editor See also Editing Tips and Tricks 1A for a variety of editing shortcuts Commands Cut Deletes the selected text or cells and places the deleted contents in the MediaLab clipboard for pasting elsewhere Copy Copies the selected text or cells and places the copied contents in the MediaLab clipboard for pasting within the same or other questionnaire See also External Copy below Paste Pastes the contents of the MediaLab clipboard to the selected cell s See also External Paste below Fill Down When cells from multiple rows are selected copies the value from the top selected cell s to the selected cell s below Fill Right When cells from multiple columns are selected copies the value from the left most cell s to the selected cell s to the right Select All Selects all the cells in the active file Delete Rows Deletes the selected rows from the active file External Copy The MediaLab experiment editor uses it s own private clipboard for cutting copying and pasting If you want to copy cells to paste in an external application e g Excel Word a text editor select the cells and choose External Copy External Paste To paste cells or text from external applications e g Excel Word a text editor select External Paste Edit Tips and Tricks Hints and short cuts 1A for working in the Experiment Editor 3 3 Options QuickInfo The following describes the functions p
39. omitted for male subjects Therefore in the Omit Conditions field there will be a 1 The question Have you ever sexually harassed a female co worker is to be omitted for female subjects and so 2 is placed in the Omit Conditions field If more than one condition should not get the item then separate the conditions with commas e g 1 2 6 cond3 5 13 Parameters QuickInfo This is about as difficult as MediaLab gets Parameters supply additional information for the presentation of certain questionnaire items Most are optional but a few are required for certain item types Parameters can be given in any order must be separated by commas and the entire set must be enclosed in a single set of parentheses Note that parameters also can be set for background backsound and backvideo files following the same rules except that their parameters are entered after the filename rather than in the Parameter s field Parameters quickstyle 5 time stamp 59 MediaLab v2014 command line argumentsI 59 duration for timed itemsl 6a height 63 key 6a left position 6d masklen number of thoughts to take 6 question wording onset 6A number of scale points 1 12 6A target question for thought rating 62 range s2A spacing 62 top position 6a send ttl signal 62 width 63 password required to continuel 6h Parameters for Different Item Types Required parameters are in bold CAPS All Items 43 Customl 43
40. or mpeg mp3 sound file in the background when the current item is presented Value Any sound file with a wav or mp3 extension Purpose In questionnaire files all items support the Backsounds field If the item is a movie or sound file that already has sound content then the content of the Backsounas field will be superimposed If you would like a sound played in the background as another item is presented simply type in the name of the sound file in this field Hint Keep in mind that MediaLab will play files in the Backsounds field their completion This allows for files in the Backsounds field to play through multiple items if you care to structure things that way To have MediaLab wait for the duration of the sound file and then automatically proceed use the duration parameterl 60 for the questionnaire item using the Backsounds field and specify the length of the sound clip in seconds For example type d30 in the Parameter s field of the questionnaire item to play the file in the Backsounds field for 30 seconds You can find out the length of a sound clip by right clicking on the file in Windows Explorer and selecting Properties Note about Sounds versus BackSounds For flexibility in playing sound files they can be presented as a Sound iteml50 or they can be presented using the Backsounds field in other items Note that Sound items end automatically when the next item in the questionnaire file starts even if the sound file
41. press Fi at any time You will also find a printable PDF manual located in the Help folder usually C MediaLab Help called MediaLabManual pdf Step 1 Run the Sample Experiment The first sample experiment is as simple as MediaLab gets a basic questionnaire in this case measuring self esteem To run Sample1 exp 1 First if MediaLab is not running full screen then make it so by clicking the maximize button in the top right corner of the main MediaLab window it s the one in the middle 2 Go to the Run 9 command in MediaLab and choose Select and Run Experiment 3 Find the Samples folder located in the C MediaLab directory 4 Double click on the Samplei folder and then double click on Sample1 exp Note that experiment files 20 are indicated by a green building block icon and that questionnaire files 34 are indicated by a paper and quill icon 5 Enter a Subject ID e g 5 and press Enter 6 Enter a 1 for the experimental Condition and press Enter 7 Follow the instructions as if you were a participant Step 2 See How it Was Done From the main menu in MediaLab select Experiment Editorl 1 When the Experiment Editor opens select Open from the File Menu and open Sample1 exp You ll see that there are 2 conditions 25 Everybody in condition 1 gets only one file selfesteem que However in condition 2 you see that these subjects will also get a PowerPoint Show pps file before they get the self esteem question
42. the top and 200 pixel from the left To specify the size of the file in the Backvideos field use the width parameterl63 in parentheses after the file name For example myvideo bmp w300 will play the video at a resolution of 300 by its proportional height As with any parameters you may combine multiple parameters in a single set of parentheses Filename QuickInfo For item types that use files or programs from outside of MediaLab the Question Wording File Name field identifies the location of the external files or programs Value Certain item types in questionnaire files use particular file formats in their Question Wording File Name field Item Type Supported File Format DirectRT Any DirectRT csv input file Executable Any exe program HTML Any htm or html document MediaLab v2014 5 7 Image Any bmp jpg or gif image file Inquisit Any Inquisit experiment file Movie Any avi mpg or mov video file PowerPoint Any Microsoft PowerPoint pps file Sound Any wav or mp3 sound file Word Doc Any Microsoft Word doc file WordPerfect Any WordPerfect wpd file Double click on the File field to browse your hard drive and select files instead of having to type the name To be safe you can always specify the complete file path e g c experiments myexp myimage bmp If you specify a complete path remember to make sure the path is the same if you load the experiment onto other computers or drives Advanced Hints
43. this example then the session will start automatically with no prompts and will end upon completion Alternatively you may specify 0 for either or both If you specify a 0 for both i e 0 0 then MediaLab will attempt to use your autostart file if it finds one If one does not exist then MediaLab will prompt you for the IDs You may also specify one but not the other in which case MediaLab will prompt you for the unspecified value This can also be run from the Windows Run command a batch bat file or shortcut file notice the difference in quotation marks c medialab medialab exe c medialab samples samplel samplel exp 15 1 2 2 Navigation Key Navigation As an alternative to having subjects click on the Continue and Go Back buttons you can have subjects use the keyboard to navigate their way through your experiment The Backspace and Space bar keys will simulate mouse clicks on the Go Back and Continue buttons respectively This does not apply to essays fill in the blanks and thought listings which can still be ended with the Escape key as an alternative to the mouse click since the Space bar and Backspace keys are necessary for open ended responses Note If you use an Executable item the navigation keys will become active only after the executable program has ended and control is returned to MediaLab Not When using an HTML item in your questionnaire that allows for spacebar or backspace input you may want to add a
44. this means that a subject needs to be assigned to a condition at the start of the experiment and what occurs in that condition is fixed Although fairly complex skip patterns and dynamic stimuli can be set up in MediaLab questionnaires a subject can not be re assigned to a different condition based on a response contingency This is not usually a big deal but it s something to keep in mind MediaLab v2014 Menu Commands The main menu commands are found at the top of the MediaLab program window These are the general commands used for running experiments viewing data files and for setting preferences Note that the MediaLab Experiment Editorl1f has it s own separate menu system Run Preferences 8 amp 2 Datal 7H Help 1 Experiment Editor 1h A 2 1 Run Menu Commands When you are ready to run your experiment either as a trial run or to collect real data you have three options From the Run menu you can choose to Select and run an experiment Ctri S Select and run a single questionnaire Ctri Q Run last selection again Ctri R Run a recent selection again C MediaLab Samples Sample1 sample1 exp Exit MediaLab Ctri X Select and run experiment If you haven t run the experiment before this choice allows you to search through the folders on your machine to find the desired experiment Locate the experiment file and then either double click on it or select it and click Open Select
45. timed items optional The default for many item types e g instructions essays Word documents fill in the blank thought and recall lists image files is to click on Continue to proceed Optionally you can set a duration parameter d followed by a number to display these items fora set amount of time and then automatically proceed to the next available item For example if you wanted an instruction or an image to be displayed for 30 seconds and then automatically continue you would specify d30 An integer value greater than or equal to 1 is required Instruction items also offer a special option you can use to create a minimum exposure time On any instruction item if you use a negative duration value e g d 10 then the Continue button will not appear until that many seconds have passed You can use this option to ensure that subjects are exposed to some information for a minimum amount of time after which they may proceed when ready Remember that you can always embed images amp html sound and video in an instruction item by using BackGroundl 39 BackSound 40 or BackVideol 4 fields respectively key Open Ended Response Times By default response times for fill in the blank and essay questions are taken at the time the subject continues to the next item You can optionally get it for the first key stroke instead by using the parameter k1 Disable the Spacebar HTML pages that require input may have a subject press
46. times to the probes The probe schedule can span multiple items as it runs independently of the experiment once launched Response times are assessed using DirectX so their accuracy is very good To execute a probe task you create a schedule of probes in an Excel file Each schedule may contain multiple sets of probes with each set having an ID such as 1 2 3 and so on Ina MediaLab questionnaire we refer to this ID in the parameters of any item by saying 1 or 2 That tells the Probe Generator which set of probes to execute The set will execute until completion which means that a single set can span one or many items in MediaLab You can have as many sets of probes as you like Set 1 Set 2 Set 3 and so on However you can only request a given set once in a session You might assign different probe sets to different tasks within the same session or to the same task in different between subject conditions For detailed documentation and samples see http www empirisoft com support showthread php p 826 Sending and Receiving Serial Data Some external devices can emulate keyboard input so that input will be instantly recognized as key presses from a standard keyboard they will just arrive much faster For example our DirectINTM Precision Button Boxes and Keyboards are all USB ready and send signals within 1ms that look like regular keystrokes to your computer Some older devices though still communicate via the serial port This se
47. to enter a response of unlimited length Subjects will be given your question wording at the top of the screen and a box below it in which to type their response Participants can voluntarily end the Essay item using the Esc which you can explain in your question wording if you like or it can automatically end by setting a time limit with the optional duration parameterl 60 Data for essay questions will automatically be written to a separate file named with the variable name you assign to the item By default the essay response box below the question wording takes up the remainder ofthe screen Optionally you can specify the size of the essay response box using the height h and width w parametersls3 and the placement of the essay response box using the top t and left I parameters 60 This allows additional room for question wording or for background images html Note about reaction times By default response times for fill in the blank and essay questions taken at the time the subject continues to the next item You can optionally get it for the first key stroke instead by using k1 in the Parameter s field 6 of the Essay item Executable In the case that MediaLab can not meet your needs for a particular experiment or questionnaire MediaLab will run any other program for you including DOS Windows 3 1 and Windows 95 98 NT 2000 XP programs Simply embed the program within your questionnaire by selecting the executable item t
48. use of file extensions These are the three letters following the period on file names e g exe doc mpg For this reason it is advisable that you don t instruct Windows to hide these from you To set this as a default Open any folder and select Tools from the pull down menu Select Folder Options and 6 MediaLab v2014 then View Deselect the option to have Windows Hide File Extensions It is also useful to have Windows Display the Full Path in Title Bar as well as Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts The latter setting should be on by default in Windows 7 In XP the option can be found in Control Panel gt Display gt Effects Task bar NOT always on top It is possible to have the windows task bar always on top This is not recommended for use on machines that will be running MediaLab as it gives participants easy access to the system and it can obstruct some important features of MediaLab To deselect this option right click on the task bar and then click on Properties Always on top can be de selected here if you wish Note the key sequence Ctrl Esc will make the task bar re appear at any time Screen Resolution Although MediaLab was designed to work in all screen resolutions how things look may depend on the resolution you choose Certain items may need to be repositioned with the left and top parameters when running in high resolution modes If you are working on different computers it is often best to pick a single resol
49. 4 Cascade Neatly arranges all open windows in an overlap pattern making all window titles visible Tile Horizontal Stretches all open windows their maximum width and arranges them in a horizontal overlap pattern Tile Vertical Stretches all open windows their maximum height and arranges them in a vertical overlap pattern Arrange Icons Neatly arranges all minimized window icons Hint The most useful function in the Windows menu is that at the bottom of the menu will be a list of all currently open files You can select which file to bring to the forefront by clicking on any file in this list Note also that you can use Ctrl Tab to flip through all open files 3 5 Printing QuickInfo Prints the content of your experiment or questionnaire file Value Mouse click Alt P Overview editor only Purpose You may wish to print a hardcopy of information in your experiment or questionnaire file To select which columns to print click Select Columns to View Print Check all the columns you want to print Note that you can start by clicking Select All or Deselect All You can manually widen any column if you want more of it displayed when printing For question wording cells questionnaire files only you can expand print all lines or collapse print only the first line the cells when printing When selecting Print select Expand All or Collapse All for the Multi Line Cells option 3 6 O BackSound O BackYideo
50. 40x480 resolution screen 320 t240 or 1 5 t 5 Movie To play a video file at full screen on a 800x600 resolution screen w800 or w 1 Word Document To display a Word document for 60 seconds rather than allowing the subject to press a key to continue d60 Background For a BackGround image to be displayed for 60 seconds with the top left corner located at the top left corner of the MediaLab window specify the background file as myimage bmp t1 1 d60 Key Concepts 34 Overview Window 32 Item Details BackGroundI 3a BackSound 4a BackVideol4n Filenamel4 GoBackI 4a Item Type 143 Item Wording File 53 Item Types Customl 43 DirectRTI 43 Essayl 42 Executable 44 Fill in the Blank 44 HTMLT 45 Image File 46 Inquisit 4A Key Concepts MediaLab v2014 Labels 55 NameT58 Omit Conditions 5A Parameters 5A Position 64 Randomize Between Groups 63 Randomize Within Groups 64 Instructions 44 Moviel 4A Multiple Response 4A On Line Rating 43 PowerPoint Show 43 Ranking 49 Recall List 49 Scale Responsel 50 SkipTo 68 Text Labels 6 Write Data as Text sh Write Reaction Time 69 Write To Data File 68 Sound File 50 Thought Listingl5A Thought Rating 5A Voice Response 5N WebTracker 52 Word or WordPerfect Document 52 It is recommended to first read key concepts of Experiment Files 20 before reading this section Questionnaire files are the workhorse of Media
51. Avoid using the same variable name for different items Some other things to know Reaction times are represented in you data input file by a t added to the corresponding variable names Questions that gather multiple responses e g a thought listing question named thlist are represented by an incremental index appended to the variable name e g thlist_1 thlist_2 thlist_3 etc Consequently to keep the output variable name to a maximum of 8 characters keep in mind that 2 to 4 additional characters will be appended to the variable name e g _4 __12 plus a t prefix for the reaction time variables if they re being recorded If you always limit such variable names to a maximum of four characters you will always be safe 5 12 Omit Conditions QuickInfo Omits the particular question in the conditions specified Response is assigned a missing value Details Although you may want to administer a given questionnaire in multiple conditions you may want to skip certain items in some conditions To skip the item simply enter the condition s that are not to receive the item in the omit conditions field Example Subjects watch a video about sexual harassment of women in the workplace by male co workers Afterwards they fill out a female sexual harassment questionnaire Men are all assigned to condition 1 and women are assigned to condition 2 The question Have you ever been sexually harassed by a male co worker is to be
52. DirectRTI 43 Essay 44 Executable 44 Fill in the Blank 42 HTMLI 43 Image File 46 Inquisit Session 4A quickstyle time stamp ttlsignal command key none none duration top left width height key command line arguments duration top left width height mask range key duration top left width height duration none Instructions 4A duration password onset top left Movie 4A top left width Multiple Responsel 4 Points top spacing onset range On Line Rating 48 Points PowerPoint Show 45 none Ranking 45 Points spacing width Recall Listl 49 Number duration onset Scale Responsel 50 Points top spacing onset width left Sound File 5d duration Thought Listing l5A Number duration onset width left Thought Rating 5A Question Points top spacing onset width left Voice Responsel 5h duration WebTrackerl 52 none Word Document 52 duration WordPerfect Docl 5 duration Details Note optional indicates the parameter is NEVER a required parameter of ANY item type quickstyle optional To apply custom color and font settings to a questionnaire item you can create a QuickStyle 84 file from the Preferences menu To apply it to a questionnaire item you can enter the name of the QuickStyle file precede by a e g mystyle The style will remain in effect until you apply different style file on a subsequent item or enter off as a parameter for a subsequent item
53. FileMerge located in the Utilities folder to do this rather painlessly You can also start FileMerge by selecting Data gt Merge Data Files from the main MediaLab menu After opening the filemegre application and a separate window on your computer containing the files you wish to merge just drag the files you want to merge into the FileMerge window and select Merge Files from the File menu of the filemerge application If you like you can also save the list of files to merge them again later A quick tutorial on FileMerge is available by clicking on the FileMerge Help menu How do I get SPSS to read the txt data The easiest way to access your data in SPSS is to open the sav data file located in the byVariablename data subfolder However if for any reason you want to import the raw text data files using SPSS syntax here s how If your experiment is called experi then the text file exper1 txt will have all your data in format that SPSS can read The text file experl sps will be the input syntax file for SPSS to read Just open experi sps in SPSS make sure that you don t try to open it in the Data Editor window and it will read the exper1 txt file It will automatically assign variable formats and variable names You can start analyzing immediately At the top of the sps input file are a number of things to check for to make sure you don t get any errors e g variable names that are too long Once the data has been read into SPSS you
54. If listed with yes in the value column they instruct MediaLab to send the listed worksheet s directly to your default printer This is handy for example if you want a report on sheet2 to print automatically so that you might discuss the results with the participant See Also Advanced Features Overview 99 10 4 Tips Extra Notes amp Rules to Know When creating a responses xl s file and saving it for the first time the File name is just the word responses without the quotation marks and the type of file must be xls Any use of a responses x s must follow this convention and must be saved in the same folder as the MediaLab files that use it As a guiding principle remember that MediaLab never looks at your formulas only the results How the results of calculated variables occur is completely between you and Excel Remember that it s your recipe MediaLab just supplies the ingredients and eats the meal You can include as many or as few experimental variables as you like you don t need to list every variable from your questionnaire files in the responses xls file Feel free to include only those that you need for your calculations A complete discussion of Excel s logic and math functions is way out of the scope if this tutorial If you ve never done calculations in Excel this might seem a bit intimidating at first but it s really not too bad honest The trick is getting an understanding of how to nest multiple co
55. Lab They are used to present and arrange the individual items of your experiment Remember how we said earlier in the Experiment Files Key Concepts 28 section that Questionnaire files were like jigsaw puzzle pieces In the experiment file you identify the files to be presented in your various conditions this is where you can work with the individual items of those files The key concept for creating questionnaires is very similar to that of creating experiments You just need to tell MediaLab what you want to present and the order in which you want it to happen You can use the Experiment Editorl 1 Ato create view and edit our questionnaire files The primary difference is that in questionnaires you also ask ES questions This is why in questionnaires we use the term items rather than files to describe what is being presented In contrast when talking about experiments we use the term files because that is all that experiments can present Just like experiment files questionnaire files can present various media images videos sounds documents html files executable exe programs or PowerPoint shows Unlike experiment files MediaLab questionnaires use a variety of items 43 MediaLab s multi media flexibility also allows you in most cases to combine items and media presenting them simultaneously as part of a questionnaire file Another key concept to get with questionnaires is that they are self contained Once a questionnaire f
56. MediaLab Research Software CEmpirisoft User s Guide and Reference MediaLab v2014 O 1995 2014 Empirisoft Corporation All rights reserved Ea MediaLab v2014 MediaLab v2014 Users s Guide 1995 2014 Empirisoft Corporation All rights reserved No parts of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means graphic electronic or mechanical including photocopying recording taping or information storage and retrieval systems without the written permission of Empirisoft Corporation Products that are referred to in this document may be either trademarks and or registered trademarks of the respective owners The publisher and the author make no claim to these trademarks While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this document the publisher and the author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions or for damages resulting from the use of information contained in this document or from the use of programs and source code that may accompany it In no event shall the publisher and the author be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this document Last Modified March 2014 New York NY Empirisoft Corporation 347 West 39th Street 13th Floor New York NY 10018 Website www empirisoft com Technical support is available from support empirisoft com Information regarding contact via regular mail email and ph
57. Stas 57 POS A a E A Id 64 Randomize Within Groups a ococococonononononononononono nono nn nn nn nene a a aa 64 Randomize Between GrOUPS inmi 65 SHDN O seach EET EPA TET E va E A T E AT 66 TOD ai A ancl ded EEA AAA gual ded E EA atl clied A 67 Write to Data Ple caca it a aaria art oaran 68 Write Data ls D E A E E E caus E E E 69 Write Reaction TIME or icciiececes cede dnenndeesais aa 69 Data 70 Data FAQ it A A a ad az 72 Samples 76 SM a de dlants 77 Preferences and Options 82 Preferences and OPINAS sececasivaad ees cnet sradaateats case a NAT 83 Custom Items 88 Repeating Custom tems iii sad a aE scant 91 Single Ys Multiple Variables iii ii did 92 Variable Referente A Di 94 Samples a sd 97 Advanced Features 99 Calculate Score Six iva datada ada aos dada 101 COMPIE XSKIPS cdi a adida 102 POSt SESSION RE DOS aii 102 A O 103 Tips and Notes 104 Specifying File Paths iaa a ld a a ads 104 SIZING IMAGES and MOVES ii A A aie Rede A E 105 Miscellaneous Features E 106 Trouble Shooting Ps adds 109 Index 111 1995 2014 Empirisoft Corporation Getting Started z MediaLab Features and Setup 44 Medi E EI Introduction and Key Concepts e AO Sar e Main Menu Commandsl a CEmpirisoft Designing Experiments and Questionnaires MediaLab Experiment Editor 20 MediaLab Experiment exp Files 34 MediaLab Questionnaire que Files 34 MediaLab Preferences and Other Options 83 MediaLab Samples 7 Welcome to the PDF docu
58. Turbo Copy You can quickly copy the contents of one cell to another using the right mouse button Simply right click on the cell you want to copy and drag it to the desired cell Only one cell at a time can be copied this way This can also be done between multiple open files i e drag from a cell in one file and drop to a cell in another file Copy a Block of Cells To copy a block of cells highlight the block and select Copy Ctrl C then move to the upper left cell where the pasting should begin and select Paste Ctrl V You can also copy a block of cells from one file and paste it into another using this method Copying an Entire Line Record To copy an entire line or record use the record selector at the very left of the spreadsheet this selects all the cells in that row Select Copy Ctri C then move to any cell on the line where you want it copied and select Paste Ctrl V This will copy the entire record including its details to the new line To insert copied lines see Inserting Copied Lines Records below You can also copy an entire record from one file and paste it into another using this method Copying Multiple Lines Records Follow the instructions for copying a single record above but highlight as many rows as you like with the record selector Move to any cell in the row at which you want to start the pasting and select Paste Ctrl V You can also copy entire records from one file and paste them into another u
59. You can check this option and specify none for the filename if you are interested only in the RT MediaLab v2014 By default MediaLab will record the voice response until the subject clicks Continue You can optionally specify a duration parameter 60 to record the voice response for a fixed time For example d5 would record a voice response for 5 seconds and then automatically continue to the next item Voice Response Setup Recording voice responses and voice RTs requires that Microsoft s DirectX Version 7 or later be installed on your system You can determine what version if any you have by typing dxdiag from the Run command on the Windows Start Menu DirectX can be downloaded from http www microsoft com en us download details aspx id 35 You will need to make sure you have a microphone connected to the microphone input connector on your sound card You will also need to make sure that the microphone is active and able to record Finally you will need to tell MediaLab how sensitive it should be in detecting response times To make all this easier MediaLab comes with a tool called SoundCheck in the Utilities folder After making sure your microphone is plugged into your soundcard click Monitor and speak into the microphone If all is well you should see the bar labeled Microphone Level respond immediately to your voice If that works then click Stop to end the monitoring Now try a sample voice rt Click Test RT and then speak i
60. a Notepad Save it somewhere as myTextBox htm Voila You have just created a custom item You can view it in Internet Explorer if you like by double clicking on it To use it with MediaLab open a questionnaire file and add an item choosing Custom as the item type myTextBox htm as the file name and textBox1 as the variable name That s it Try running the questionnaire and then view your data to see if the posted response was written to your data file Remember that if you have made changes that will affect your data files you ll want to click the Clear Datal731 button to delete the old data files and start fresh after backing them up if there are data you want to save Hint You can see these samples already prepared in the C MediaLab Samples Sample 5 Custom Items folder Advanced Hint Colours fonts amp focus Adding a few lines to your HTML file can make life a little easier The additions are in black lt saved from url 0013 about internet gt lt style gt lt ml style gt lt style gt lt body onload document form textbox1 focus gt lt form name form method post gt What is your answer lt input name textbox1 gt lt input type submit value Continue gt lt form gt lt body gt The first line allows you to preview the HTML file in Internet Explorer without any kind of warnings popping up The second asks MediaLab to apply the colors and fonts used in the current session The third line reques
61. aBit stopBit T 19200 778 1 input code 1 255 response value 1 12 0 0 See Also Receiving Responses Via TTL Signals 62 Receiving Response Via Serial Port 53 11 4 Trouble Shooting Tips Answers to many common trouble shooting questions can be found at our support site If you can not find the answer to your question there you may register a username and password and post your question directly on the support site This is often the fastest way to get an answer from us or maybe even one of our other helpful users If for some reason you can not get the answer you need via the support site then contact us directly through email at support empirisoft com No matter which route you take there are two basic types of trouble you might experience while trying to use MediaLab The first is trouble associated with a particular input file and the second is trouble associated with the program in general Here are some questions and we re likely to ask and recommendations for what to do depending on your situation Questionnaire or Experiment File Trouble If you re having trouble with a particular file you re working on but otherwise MediaLab is running fine e g samples work ok then e Post your questions on the forums at the Empirisoft website or send us an email with your questions and a copy of your problem file with as few items in it as possible to illustrate your question Ideally try to send files that are directly rele
62. ables If you take a look in our questionnaire self esteem que you ll see that many of the variables listed there are also listed here in the variable column of responses xls name age rsel rse2 etc These are experiment variables i e variables taken from any of our questionnaire files in the experiment This also includes reaction times such as trsel trse2 trse3 and so on If it would normally appear in your regular MediaLab data files then it can be used as an experiment variable in the responses xls file But what about variables like minmaj rse positive scored rse positive scored and rse These are not variables from the experiment That s because they are calculated variables we are creating them here in the responses xls file You can create any and as many new calculated variables as you like and you can call them whatever you like The only rule for a calculated variable is that it has a name that isn t used in your experiment The Value Column This brings us to the value column For experiment variables this is really simple you don t need to do anything As a subject progresses through your experiment MediaLab will automatically fill these values in with whatever value is recorded for that variable in the regular data files After every question in your experiment MediaLab checks the variable column of the responses xlis file to see if it can fill in any values with the newly acquired data Thus experiment variables a
63. action Time 69 Write to Data File 68 DirectRT 43 Using MediaLab Responses 106 DirectX 109 Disable Clear Data 84 Disable System Key Sequences 83 Double Click to close MediaLab 83 Duration d Parameter 31 57 Duration d Parameter que 60 dxdiag DirectX 109 E Essay 44 Data 74 Parameters 57 Excel 70 73 Executable 44 Parameters exp 31 Parameters que 57 Experiment Editor 11 17 EditMenu 14 Editing Tips 17 File Menu 12 Options 15 Printing 16 Windows 15 Experiment Files 6 20 BackGround 27 BackSound 28 BackVideo 28 Editing 20 1 Experiment Files 6 20 Editing Tips 17 File 26 Overview Window 21 Parameters 31 Printing 16 Quitting Early 10 Randomize Between Groups RBG 30 Randomize Within Groups RWG 29 Running 9 F Features Overview 1 Feedback Modifying 86 File Paths 9 104 Filename exp 26 Filename que 41 53 Fill in the Blank 44 Parameters 57 Fonts Fonts and Colours 83 Foreign 85 G GoBack 42 H Height w Parameter que 63 Help 109 Hide MediaLab Rats 83 HTML Custom Items 43 Experiment File 26 Parameters exp 31 Parameters que 57 Question Labels 55 Questionnaire Item 45 Image BackGround exp 27 BackGround que 39 Experiment File 26 Parameters exp 31 MediaLab v2014 Parameters que 57 Questionnaire Item 46 Inquisit 47 Installation 4 Instructions 47 Parameters 57 IP Licensing 4 Item Types 43 Item Wording 53 K Key Concep
64. and search To enable this option simply create a text file in your experiment folder called browser txt and copy the following into it changing true to false for any buttons you do not want displayed back true forward true stop true home true refresh true search true Note that the HTML item is capable of displaying many other file types than just HTML Essentially MediaLab passes whatever file or URL you specify to the Internet Explorer Browser engine So if you can view it in Explorer then you can present it using the HTML item type So if you have a file of any type that you want to display in MediaLab try specifying it as the filename in an HTML item see also Word Document item below Caution HTML pages that require input may have a subject pressing the spacebar as a part of that input Since the spacebar is also used in MediaLab to continue with the next MediaLab v2014 item this can cause a conflict If this applicable to your HTML file you can add a k 1 parameter 60 to disable the spacebar as a means to proceed to next item Image File Displays an image file MediaLab supports BMP GIF and JPG image formats You can ea the location of the image on the screen using the optional top and left parameters 6 Hint To display two images at a time you can select a background 3 A image and place it accordingly or you can insert multiple images in an HTML or Word file and then simply present that instead
65. ather to the next line in the text box The Escape key may be used as an alternative to the Enter key in such cases target question for thought rating q MediaLab allows you to have subjects rate their own open ended responses from thought or recall list items on any dimension you like The thought rating item works much like a scale response but feeds back to subjects their responses from an earlier thought or recall list item To do this you need to specify the variable name you gave to the thought or recall list item from which MediaLab is to supply the responses in combination with the q parameter For example say subjects listed their thoughts earlier in a variable you named tlist To have subjects later rate these thoughts using a thought rating item for example how positive or negative each thought was you would specify the parameter qtlist in the Parameter s field of your though rating item Note that for thought ratings you must also specify the number of scale points parameter s ttl signal optional To communicate with external computers or hardware you can send out a signal from MediaLab at the onset of any item The signal can be a byte value any integer from 1 255 You can send the signal to any port address you like Make sure you use the decimal value of the port not the hex value For example the port address of the parallel port on most systems is 888 or 378 in Hex Finally you can send the signal for a
66. ays to control the size of the items First you can specify a width parameterl 63 This will force the items to be a constant width and the text will wrap to accommodate the width i e becoming multi lined Asecond way you can control the size is by specifying a spacing parameter 62 E g to display 6 items with a fixed width of 250 pixels and a font size of 7 you would use parameter values of p6 w250 S7 When saving the data MediaLab will create a unique variable for each of your ranked items and save it s ordinal value in the ranking as its value For example if your ranking item s variable name were rk1 then the fourth item in your list will be called rk1_04 If that forth item were ranked second the value of rk1_04 would be 2 If you select the Write Reaction Time option for a ranking item you will also get the first time each item was selected by the subject these values will be recorded as typical RTs using the same variable name preceded with a t e g trk1_04 Recall List Allows subjects to indicate what they can recall one memory at a time Operates in the same was as thought listings 5 see below Recall list items support the BackGround 39 MediaLab v2014 BackSoundl 40 or BackVideol4N fields Scale Response The scale response format is the standard format to use when you want to offer multiple closed ended response alternatives Use from 1 to 12 response options and provide a text label for each Subject
67. b also creates a data input list for your data set in both Excel and SPSS formats so that you can start analyzing your data immediately MediaLab also provides a data merging utility 7 so that you can easily combine data gathered on different computers before running your analysis See Datal 74 for more details What MediaLab is NOT Before planning a study with MediaLab it critical to know its limitations Most importantly we advise serious caution about using any program written for the Windows environment for studies requiring extremely accurate presentation times and response times involving visual images MediaLab does utilize a timer with a resolution of less than one millisecond and was originally written with the functionality to conduct a wide variety of standard reaction time experiments such as priming studies For a number of technical reasons this capability has been removed from the main program and has been developed as a stand alone program called DirectRT that will work cooperatively with MediaLab although we still use the high res timer DirectRT provides high precision timing routines for the presentation of images and measurement of response times in the Windows environment and is recommended for any application where high precision timing is critical The second limitation of MediaLab to keep in mind is that it works on the principle of a static experimental design Dynamic changes in design are not currently possible Basically
68. browser what to present and what to do with user actions Both Custom and HTML items in MediaLab may contain pretty much any HTML code you like This means that anything that can be displayed in Internet Explorer whether it s on the web or on your local computer can also be used This can include pictures movies formatted text hyperlinks flash animations interactive java applets scripts and so on However there is a limit to the HTML tem type you can t collect any data with it You can include questions but there has never been a way to get MediaLab to save those data in the regular data files Contrariwise the Custom item type allows you to do just that through the use of standard HTML form code Note that a useful introduction to HTML is beyond the scope of this documentation For a general introduction see www w3schools com html html_intro asp www w3schools com html html_examples asp What is an HTML Form Forms are the basic ingredient for asking questions on the Internet A single question or set of questions can be asked in any HTML document by surrounding some question code discussed shortly with the lt form gt tag like this lt form method post gt questions and variable names for responses go here lt form gt The lt form method post gt tag tells the browser to keep track of any data that is collected within the form and make it available for saving when the user clicks a button to submit their response
69. cessary operation and is provided mainly for the purpose of aesthetics and to help you verify that you have the correct number of files in each condition Hint If your files are out of order be sure to sort 231 before you renumber Print See Experiment Editor Printing 161 Help Starts the interactive help system You can search the documentation using the Contents Index and Search tabs in the left hand window Also note that MediaLab takes advantage of context sensitive help such that pressing F1 at any time will often direct you immediately to help with what you are working on A printable PDF copy is available in the C MediaLab Help folder MediaLab v2014 Save Saves the current file Save As Saves the current file while allowing you to set the file name and or location OK Closes the Detai s window and returns to the Overview window Navigation There are many ways to navigate your way around the experiment editor The most useful methods to be aware of are e to jump from field to field you can simply click on the field you want to edit or e you can also use the tab key and the arrow keys to jump from one field to the next When your are editing in the overview window double clicking will allow you to edit any field or will pull open a file search box if a file is required If you want to edit a field that requires a filename but do not want to open a file search dialog then simply highlight the field and p
70. ction describes how you can get MediaLab to recognize and record serial port data Receiving a Single Response via Serial Port As an alternative to keyboard input you can receive input from external devices such as response boxes via the serial port To do so you just need to create a file called comport txt in your experiment folder and copy the following text into it comPort baudRate parity dataBit stopBit T 19200 7781 input code 1 255 response value 1 12 1 1 F D DASUN DN a W NH MediaLab v2014 You should not modify the first or third line The second line represents the values of the variables listed on the first line You can change any of these as necessary The remaining lines tell MediaLab how to map incoming signals to response keys On each line you can list a pair where the first value is the signal sent to the serial port i e 1 255 and the second value is the response it should map on to i e 1 to 12 In the example above if MediaLab detects a 1 coming through the serial port it will react as though the 1 or F1 key had just been pressed Receiving Streams of Serial Data MediaLab can also accept and log streams of serial data from an external source MediaLab will write the exact ASCII data to an external file named comdata txt To indicate to MediaLab that the serial data should be recorded your serial device should be programmed to send out data packets that are surrounded in brac
71. d so forth Note that you can also substitute calculated values from a responses xis file by placing the variable name in angular brackets For example if you had a calculated value named total in your responses xls file you could enter lt tota gt in your HTML file and MediaLab would substitute the correct value at the time the HTML is displayed lt ml subject gt Subject ID lt ml gt quickstyle lt ml condition gt Condition lt ml O gt time stamp lt ml varname gt Variable Name lt ml c gt command line arguments lt ml wording gt Question lt ml d gt duration not Wording Will available as a also include variable substitutions lt ml color gt lt ml bgcolor gt lt ml font gt lt ml fontsize gt lt ml color2 gt lt ml bgcolor2 gt lt ml font2 gt lt ml fontsize gt lt ml bg gt lt ml bs gt lt ml bv gt lt ml textx gt from responses xls if applicable Main area text color Will have prefix e g CCCCFF Main area background color Will have prefix e g CCCCFF Main area font name e g arial Main area font size Will have pt appended e g 16pt Input area text color Will have prefix e g CCCCFF Input area background color Will have prefix e g CCCCFF Input area font name e g arial Input area font size Will have pt appended e g 16pt BackGround Append parameters if desired t l h W
72. d values along with your other MediaLab data Create simple placeholder variables in your questionnaire by using the Custom item type with no filename When such an item is encountered MediaLab will check to see if the variable name exists in your responses xis file If it does then MediaLab will record the value for that variable in your regular data files In other words by using the same variable name for the placeholder and calculated variables MediaLab will know which values to grab from responses xls and store in your regular data files Note that MediaLab will be grabbing the current value of the calculated variable if and whenever it comes across the placeholder item during the session i e location of the placeholder within your session could be an important factor MediaLab v2014 See Also Advanced Features Overview 99 10 2 Complex Skips Just as calculated variables can be used as information we can present back to subjects they can also be used to help us with skip logic For any experiment variable you have entered in the reponses xis file you can specify or calculate a variable to skip to when that item is completed If the current MediaLab item is listed in the variable column of the responses xls file then MediaLab will check the skipto column when the item is finished to see where it should go next If there is no skipto value then no skip will occur Let s take the fill in the blank age question for example Currently t
73. der Thought Listing The thought listing item is used when multiple open ended responses are desired for a single question For example a common use for this item type is to expose subjects to information and then ask them to indicate the thoughts that occurred to them during exposure Thought listing items require the n parameter 6 to indicate the number of responses you want listed e g n4 for four thoughts You can also specify a time limit for the thought listing item using the duration parameterl 60 Note also that the escape key will end the thought listing question You can optionally inform subjects of this so that they can continue whenever they are done listing their thoughts Thought Rating MediaLab allows you to have subjects rate their own open ended responses from thought or recall lists on any dimension you like The thought rating item works much like a scale response but feeds back to subjects their responses from an earlier thought or recall list question To do this you need to specify the variable name you gave to the thought or recall list from which MediaLab is to supply the responses For example say subjects listed their thoughts earlier in a variable you named tlist To have subjects later rate these thoughts using a thought rating item for example how positive or negative each thought was you would specify qtlist in the Parameter s field your though rating item Note that for thought rating items you must al
74. dered advanced features we re going to presume you have some basic familiarity with MediaLab From the samples folder run Condition 1 of the following experiment C MediaLab Samples Sample5 advanced featuresladvanced exp After the first few questions this should appear to look just like the standard self esteem questionnaire sample from the introductory tutorial What is very different from the standard tutorial is the summary screen which follows the self esteem scale Somehow we have been able to calculate your overall self esteem score and present that value back to you We have also been able to tell you what that score means i e whether you are high or low in self esteem complete with matching emoticon i e or We have also been able to calculate your average response time and tell you if you ve been fast or slow On the following screen we continue by asking a question about your membership in a racial minority or majority based on how you responded to the race question earlier in the questionnaire What happens next will depend on how you scored on the self esteem test You can try this a couple times to see for yourself If you scored moderately 2 3 or 4 then you will be at the end of the session If you scored very high greater than 4 then you will be at a screen representing where a social desirability scale might be administered If you scored very low less than 2 then you will be at a screen representi
75. e However if you get an message saying that MediaLab can not find one of these applications then you can fill in these values and MediaLab will search there You can click the button to the right of each field to browse your computer Saving the File Click Save to save your work or click Close to cancel the changes Click SaveAs to save the current configuration to a new Preferences file When clicking SaveAs you can also then select Save as Type and save the colours and fonts to a new Quick Style file if you like see below Load Other Preferences File Allows you to load the preferences saved in another file The default mlp preferences file is always loaded when MediaLab starts You can edit and save the default preferences under a new name and then load your new preferences file before you begin running your experiment This can be useful if different members of your lab have different preferences for how MediaLab operates Remember that if you re only changing colors and fonts then it s much easier to just create a new QuickStyle file see below Mute MediaLab Sounds Upon certain events MediaLab will give audible feedback by way of beeps and clicks To turn off these sounds check this option Disable Clear Data Prevents the Clear Datal75 button from being pressed at the start of a session This is a handy option if sessions are being started by users who are unfamiliar with the program QuickStyles Create and Apply Mul
76. e order you have specified Think of the Experiment Files like a tabletop and the Questionnaire Files as a bunch of jigsaw puzzle pieces The Experiment Files serve as the surface upon which you arrange all of the individual pieces of your experiment Questionnaire Files The Questionnaire Files serve the all important purpose of where you organize the general order of elements of your experiment like the items and their presentation order EN With the exception of questionnaires no data is gathered for files that you specify here This is a very important concept Data is only gathered in questionnaire files that you create Questionnaires are much more flexible in terms of the types of files and information that can be presented and the type of responses and data that can be collected The Experiment file that you create with the experiment editor simply tells MediaLab which files are to be presented in each of a virtually unlimited number of conditions This can be as simple as assigning a single questionnaire file to each condition or as complicated as multiple questionnaire files assigned to each condition each interspersed with video audio graphics Word documents and PowerPoint shows for which data does not need to be gathered e g for instruction screens or debriefing documents Remember though that all file types can also be presented in a questionnaire if you like That is why the experiment file can be as simple as stating wh
77. e for var01 in your data files Done deal It s a little trickier when you have multiple variables being collected with a single custom item To deal with this you have two choices use a variables parameter or create dummy variables in your experiment Using a variables Parameter To use the variables parameter add a v parameter to your Custom item indicating the number of variables you want to collect e g v7 would create space for seven variables The variables will be named after the primary variable name with an underscore and numbers appended So for example ifthe variable name of your Custom item were choice you could post variables in your HTML form called choice_01 choice_02 choice_07 In this example we ask the participant to list three good movies It s very similar to the first example but here we create three blanks instead of just one In this case we ll need three variables so we will add the parameter v3 to our Custom item that we are calling movies Using the v parameter means that we will reference the variable names by using the primary variable name movies along with _01 _02 and_03 lt form name form method post gt lt ml wording gt lt br gt lt br gt lt input name lt ml varname gt _01 gt lt br gt lt input name lt ml varname gt _02 gt lt br gt lt input name lt ml varname gt _03 gt lt br gt lt br gt lt input type submit value Continue gt lt form gt How it looks in a
78. e question wording will not appear for 750ms maximum number of thoughts or recall items to take For thought listing and recall list itmes you need to specify the number of separate responses you would like to record For example if you wanted the subject to list four thoughts in a thought listing item then you would specify n4 If you wanted to them to list up to 4 you can set a time limit using the duration A Y password x optional Sometimes you may want the subjects to wait for you to allow them to continue to the next phase of the experiment You may also want to prevent the subject from seeing the MediaLab screen when the experiment is finished To do this insert an instruction item and use the x parameter followed by the password you want to use For example if you wanted to use the password monkey then enter xmonkey as a parameter value for the instruction item Presumably the experimenter will have to enter this password or tell subjects what it is at the appropriate time The characters will be masked e g so that subjects will not see the password as it is entered Pressing lt Enter gt after entering the correct password will cause MediaLab to continue MediaLab v2014 range optional You can now limit a fill in the blank item 44 response to a numerical range by using the range parameter For example to accept only a valid age you might use r16 125 which would require a response between 16 and
79. e to locate the folder to which it is attempting to write the data If you have multiple computers write data to this same alternate folder it is MediaLab v2014 recommended that you use a Unique Machine Code see below for each computer This 3 letter identifier of each computer will be appended to all of its data files This serves to identify which data files came from which computer and also helps to prevent conflicts that may occur from multiple computers attempting to write to the same files at the same time since each computer will write to its own unique files These multiple files can be easily merged later using the FileMerge utility provided in MediaLab s data menul 7 Unique Machine Code Type any extension here that you want appended to data files produced on the current computer This helps to identify the machine on which data was collected Leave this field blank if you don t want a code appended to the data file names default Password to End Option You can set a default password that will be required at the end of every experiment This saves you the trouble of creating a separate password item in your experiment If you forget the password the secret key sequence CTRL RIGHT ARROW will skip you out of it No password will be required if this field is left blank Where to Find Supporting Applications For most users these fields can be left blank because MediaLab will automatically know where these applications ar
80. ead of having this be a fixed image you could have your custom item pull up a different picture every time by placing an image in the background field in the questionnaire Then in your HTML you could specify lt img src lt ml bg gt gt Voila a different picture every time whatever you have put in the BackGround field Indirect Substitution optional Values may be directly substituted by entering them directly into the HTML code as above This can make previewing the HTML e e in Internet Explorer a little difficult because IE won t know what lt ml bg gt means If you don t care about previewing the HTML then it doesn t really matter However there is an alternative method called indirect substitution where you can list the substitutions below all the HTML code like this lt form method post gt lt img src mypic jpg gt lt br gt some wording here lt input name varname gt lt input type submit value Continue gt lt form gt lt ml subs ml sub question wording lt ml wording gt ml sub varname lt ml varname gt ml sub mypic jpg lt ml bg gt gt See Also Custom Items Overview 88 Repeating Custom Items 9h Single Vs Multiple Variables 92 Samples eA 94 Samples Some Custom Sample Code Examples of custom items and various code snippets can be found throughout the forums at www empirisoft com support The following examples of HTML form code are taken from www w3
81. ed in the Data subfolder You can view these files by browsing through My Computer on your desktop to the appropriate data folder You can also select View Data from the Data menu in MediaLab this will allow you to view any data file txt csv sav you select Note that MediaLab will use the default program your computer uses to view these file types Alternative Data Structures How does MediaLab write the data file given that different subjects can get different dependent measures Good question This was a real challenge because we wanted to be able to produce a single data file that could be a constant for all subjects no matter what condition they were in As you may know data are collected during the administration of questionnaire files in which anything can be embedded Subjects can then receive different questionnaires in different conditions or the same questionnaires but in different orders Before starting an experimental session MediaLab goes through the whole experiment file and looks for all the questionnaires you have in all your conditions When MediaLab writes the data file it writes data for ALL the questionnaires in the experiment whether or not the subject received them If a subject did not receive certain questions or questionnaires then missing values are written When the subject has finished MediaLab writes TWO sets of data files that contain the same information but are structured differently depending on your
82. ed input lt form method post gt Username lt input type text name user gt lt input type submit value submit gt lt form gt How it looks in a browser Username Submit If you type some characters in the text field above and click the Submit button you will make the text data available to MediaLab for the variable User Source www w3schools com htmI htmI_forms asp Back to Custom Items Overview 883 Responses xls Calculated Values Complex Skips amp Reports Overview This section will show you how to accomplish three advanced functions with MediaLab Calculate scores and other variables while a session is running Present these calculated values on screen as stimuli or feedback use them in skip patterns or in post session reports Execute complex skip patterns Base skips on any prior response or even combinations of prior responses and calculated variables Create and optionally print summary reports immediately following the experimental session Create graphs scale scores or anything else you want based on raw and or summarized data Sample Before we look into the technical details of accomplishing these advanced functions let s run a quick sample that demonstrates all three Note that to take advantage of the functions described in this section you will need to have Microsoft Excel installed on your system both to design and to run the sessions Also because these are consi
83. edefined format No Delimited Yes Variable names at top Yes First case Line 2 Each line represents a case Yes All of the cases Yes Delimiter Comma uncheck all others Finish If you have any trouble reading in the data you can look at the data directly in any text editor If the file is especially large and difficult to read in its raw form try a powerful free text editor like PSPad from www pspad com See also Data FAQI7A 6 1 Data FAQ Merging Data 73 Using SPSS to read your data 7 Using Excel or other spreadsheet to read your datal 73 Getting Data into SAS 73 Viewing Data 7 Determining presentation order of random items and files 74 Determining when events happened in real time 74 a Location of essay datal74 Changing the values written to the data file 7 Changing the value used for missing datal 75 The Clear Data button and how to disable itl 75 How to create a vertical format data file 73 How to save data from a custom item made with HTML 7 r Using Long variable names 7e a Inserting variables into question wording and response optionsI7 amp Is there an easy way to merge multiple MediaLab data files Each subject s data are appended to the same constant data file for ease of analysis so you won t have to merge any files that are collected on the same computer You will however have to merge files collected on different computers MediaLab offers a utility called
84. ells gt Expand All from the Options menu This is also an option you can select when printing your file Selecting Cells to View When working with your file you may wish to view only certain columns To select the columns to view select Choose Columns to View Print Ctrl H from the Options menu This is also an option you can select when printing your file Note that the column selection feature applies only while the file is open and is not saved for future use Copying and Pasting to and from Other Applications The new editor uses its own proprietary clipboard so you can not use the usual copy and paste functions to copy cells to and from other applications e g Word Excel etc To do this use the External Copy and External Paste commands on the Edit menu These MediaLab v2014 functions access the usual Windows clipboard Editing Files in Microsoft Access Questionnaire que and Experiment exp files are really just small Access database files If you right click on any questionnaire or experiment file and select Open With you can choose Microsoft Access if you have it installed you may have to browse for it If you do this you may be informed that you can not make changes to database objects That s ok You may also be asked if you want to convert the database to a more recent version just say no and ask to open the file Once the file is open in Access you can double click on Table1 to edit the file This allows you t
85. elp system You can search the documentation using the Contents Index and Search tabs in the left hand window Also note that MediaLab takes advantage of context sensitive help such that pressing F1 at any time will often direct you immediately to help with what you are working on A printable PDF copy is available in the MediaLab program folder installed by default as the C MediaLab Help folder Save Saves the active file with its current name and location on your drive Save As Saves the active file but allows you to specify a new file name and or save location oK Closes the Details window and returns to the Overview window Navigation There are many ways to navigate your way around the questionnaire editor The most useful methods to be aware of are e To jump from field to field you can simply click on the field you want to edit or e You can also use the Tab key and the arrow keys to jump from one field to the next When your are editing in the Overview window double clicking will allow you to edit any field or will open a file search box if a file is required If you want to edit a field that requires a filename but do not want to open a file search dialog then simply highlight the field and press enter to edit the field directly All forms have a button with a check mark like this Y This button closes whatever editor you are currently in You will always be given the option to save any changes that you ve made D
86. em will ensure that only one of the five response options must be chosen and consequently guarantees your skips to work 5 18 TextLabels QuickInfo Text labels provide the response alternatives e g strongly agree female gt 10 000 and so forth very positive for scale response and thought rating items Simply type whatever label you want in the Text Label field of a response option If you specify none for a given text label then that label will appear blank This can be used for example to create a scale anchored only at the ends Hints You can also now include lt specify gt in the text label of any response option This will not be displayed to the subject but will cause MediaLab to prompt subjects to enter a text response This is handy in cases where you want to provide an alternative such as other For example if you wanted a response option to be labeled as other and you wanted subjects to specify what other means then enter other lt specify gt in the Text Label field for that response choice The actual text response will be written to the data file Also note that copying and pasting a questionnaire item using the lt specify gt options all the copied items will also contain the lt specify gt option Advanced Hints If you want to specify a specific location for a button you can add top and left parameters 60 to the Text Label field for that response option For example if you want to relocate a bu
87. er s field 59 of any item e g mystyle1 When MediaLab sees this it will read the style file and apply it immediately MediaLab will first look in your experiment folder for the file e g mystyle1 mlq If it doesn t find it it will look in the MediaLab Styles folder If it finds it it will immediately apply that style to your running experiment You can have as many quickstyle files as you like and can apply them however frequently you like The currently applied style will remain in effect until you request a different style file or until off is encountered in the parameter field of another item Aside from added flexibility of formatting this allows you to store color and font information within your experiment folder so that it s always available If for example you send someone your experiment folder the formatting will remain the same so long as the quick style files are included in the folder This also means you no longer have to worry about loading the correct Preferences file before each experiment because your experiment takes care of this for you Note that you don t have to use quick style files at all If you do not apply any quick style files in your experiment MediaLab will simply use the colors and fonts specified in the Preferences file e g default mlp which is loaded automatically Foreign fonts Improved foreign character support If you need to display foreign characters in MediaLab there are now a few opt
88. es otherwise debrief See Also Advanced Features Overview 9 10 3 Post Session Reports At the end of every session MediaLab automatically saves a copy of Responses xls in the data reports folder The copy is named using the current subject ID and will have all of the subject s responses to the experiment variables saved in the value column There are two reasons for this One is that this allows you to open the subject s report and check your calculations You will be able to view the results of all of calculated variables and skipto values based on the subject s actual responses It s a handy way to check your work The second reason for this is the option to create post session reports for each subject In the sample provided you can click on the sheet2 tab in the lower left corner of Responses xls You will see a template for a post session report This is a completely free format It uses Excel formatting to create text and figures with references to experiment and calculated variables on the main worksheet As the session unfolds and values are updated on the main sheet so are the fields and figures in the report When the session is over the report is saved for easy access to these summary data Take a look at sheet2 of data reports 1 xls as an example Notice that on the main page of responses xls there are two lines that read print sheet1 no print sheet2 no You can add these optional lines to any responses xls file
89. esteem que EN Sort Sorts the files in the experiment first by condition and then by position The sort button makes life a little easier by automatically reordering all of the files in your experiment so that you need not worry about where you are placing a file at any given time When MediaLab sorts the experiment files it will first place all of the files in each condition together Next it will reorder the files within each condition by their ordinal position If you forget to do this the editor will do it automatically when you exit You can manually sort whenever and as often as you like by clicking the sort button Hints To add a new file between two existing files e g at positions 2 and 3 assign it a position value between these values e g 2 5 and then click the Sort button After sorting you can automatically renumber all of your items as sequential integers by clicking the renumberl 23 button Important MediaLab will first sort by the condition 2 field and then by the position field so be sure that you identify the condition of the file before you sort Renumber Renumbers the position 25 values within each condition 25 with sequential integer values The renumber button cleans up your position numbering by replacing the values with sequential integers Within each condition the first file will get a position value of 1 the second will get a 2 and so forth This is not a ne
90. etails Editor In the details editor you will notice four buttons with arrows z e The first key will take you to the details of the first file in your questionnaire file e The second key i you to the item immediately preceding the one you are currently editing Yv e The third key E you to the item immediately after the one you are currently editing Vv e and the fourth key takes you to the last item in your questionnaire file 5 3 BackGround QuickInfo Display an image or HTML file or URL in the background as the current item is presented Value Any image file with a bmp jpg or gif extension or any HTML or URL Purpose In questionnaires the item types that support background images are Essays 4 Fill in the Blank 44 Image files 48 Instructions A Multiple Responsel 4 Recall listing 4 Scale ResponseT 50 Sound files 507 Thought listing 5 If you would like an image html file or web page to be displayed in the background simply type in the name of the file in this field If you want to present an image or HTML file by itself simply use the Imagel 46 or HTML 43 item type Important Note If you want to display an HTML file or URL as a background image you MUST specify the size and location of the area in which you want it displayed This is because the browser display area will cover and hide most other items that it overlaps so it s very important to specify the area in which you want
91. experiment You can edit the content of these messages to suit your specific needs or even translate them into an alternate language You will find two files in the styles folder called messages txt and substitute txt which you can edit in any text editor Messages txt contains all of the possible feedback that MediaLab presents to subjects during an experiment How to modify MediaLab messages Do NOT modify messages txt That would be bad Instead create and modify a file called substitute txt If you would like to customize or translate messages simply copy the messages you want to change into substitute txt Make sure you copy the entire line including the ID number Change only the text within the quotation marks MediaLab will substitute messages based on their ID number The substitute file you make may contain all of the messages in this file or just a subset that you want to change You can put the substitute txt file in the C MediaLab Styles folder or in an experiment folder of your choice For example you could copy messages 103 104 and 106 from messages txt B messages tx t Notepad OF x File Edit Format View Help 101 The time limit for this question has passed multiple response 102 The time limit for this question has passed scale response 103 It would be ideal if you were to type something before continuing fill in the blank 104 Please enter a response using numbers only fill in the blank 105
92. fferent display resolution on your computer Control Panel gt Display Settings Look at the scale again it should be about the same no matter how you change your display One factor that does to to influence the scale is whether you use small fonts or large fonts in your system settings Small fonts produce a slightly larger range for both height and width If you want the experiment to look the same on all computers you should check to make sure they are all running small fonts or that they are all running large fonts aor the width parameter 63 will range from 1 to about 700 The height parameter 63 will range from 1 to about 500 These values apply to the top and left parameters 60 as well Note that the scale applies to most everything in MediaLab when the top left height and width parameters are used The exception is movies Movies do not follow the MediaLab scale because they are presented with the Windows MediaPlayer Consequently if you specify a width of 300 for example it will appear smaller on a larger MediaLab v2014 screen resolution How you can combat this is to use the special width parameters 63 provided especially for movies For example w 1 will play the movie at full screen w 2 will play it half screen w 3 at a quarter and there are others Note also that although the scale applies to images that this is only true if you explictly define the size of the image using the height and width parameters
93. for 50 questions read on Instead of adding the exact question wording to your custom item s HTML code you can simply say lt m wording gt and MediaLab will automatically substitute the question wording from your questionnaire file This means each time you use your custom item in a MediaLab questionnaire you can enter different question wording the you would for any other normal item MediaLab will take it and put it into you HTML file for you Likewise instead of using a specific variable name in the HTML form code you can simply specify lt ml varname gt This means you can now use the same custom item file with many questions in the same questionnaire because each time MediaLab will substitute the current variable name into the HTML You can also substitute other values such as backgrounds backsounds backvideos fonts and colors from the current session and so forth without having to change your item For all the stuff that MediaLab can substitute into your HTML see the variable reference 9 table Note it is super supremely critical to use the lt m varname gt substitution if you are going to be using the same custom item file over and over again in the same experiment Otherwise the posted variable name will be always be the same and so the response will always be written to the same variable in the data file All of the other substitutions can provide for some handy tricks but they are never necessary Substituting Values f
94. for each You can use numbers 1 2 3 and so forth or text cond1 male speaker sg24 and so forth to identify your conditions Just be sure to give the same condition id to every file that you want to be presented in that condition If a file is to be presented in multiple or all conditions simply list it once with each condition id Hints Values are treated as words for purposes of sorting So if you have more than nine conditions and are using numbers to label the conditions you may want to use two digits e g 01 02 09 10 etc to maintain your numerical order after sorting Using long text identifiers can be a pain when you are running many subjects and have to type the long condition names to start the experiment every time Using numbers or short letter combinations to identify your conditions will solve this For factorial designs try assigning single letters to represent the various levels of your factors For example imagine a persuasion experiment with a 2 attractive vs unattractive speaker x 3 strong vs weak vs no arguments design The two levels of the speaker factor could be represented with A and U and the three levels of the argument factor could be represented with S W and N respectively The six conditions might be identified as AS AW AN US UW and UN Or for simplicity you might simply label them 1 2 3 4 5 and 6 while keeping a record of which number corresponded to which experimental condit
95. fy For example if you specify w200 for a video that is normally 320x240 it will appear as 200x150 You can express location and size parameters for ANY item type as a percentage of the screen E g w 3 h 25 would be a rectangle 30 percent of the screen s width and 25 percent of its height To use percentages simply use a value less than 1 and greater than 0 You can also use the following shortcuts rather than specifying an exact width e g w 1 w2 etc none or w0 Default Size a w 1 Full Screen a w 2 Half Screen w 3 One Fourth Screen w 4 One Sixteenth Screen a w1 Double Size w2 Half Size w10 and higher specified width amp proportional height Examples Scale Response To set the number of response options for a scale response to 5 p5 Image To set the top left corner of an image to the center of a 640x480 resolution screen 1320 t240 or 1 5 t 5 Instructions To require that password be entered before the subject can continue e g at the end of the experiment between phases of the experiment specify a password preceded by an x e g xmonkey Movie To play a video file at full screen w 1 Thought listing To have subjects list up to 8 thoughts or until 120 seconds have passed which ever comes first n8 d120 Background For backgrounds backsounds and backvideos the parameters are always entered in parentheses after the filename and are always optional E g Fora
96. h cases in the same way you would use them for an image or essay item you also use the top t and left I parameters 6h to control the placement of the response box as well as the height h and width w 63 parameters to control the size of the response box Note about reaction times By default response times for fill in the blank and essay questions taken at the time the subject continues to the next item You can optionally get it for the first key stroke instead by using the parameter k1 60 HTML Displays an HTML file exactly as it would appear in Microsoft s Internet Explorer MediaLab will open a full screen browser window to display the HTML or other URL that you specify The HTML page will be fully active so that the subject can click on hyperlinks or other objects and browse to other pages that you make available HTML files can be located either locally or on the internet Simply choose the HTML item and then enter the location of the HTML file in the Question Wording File Name field e g c experiment stim1 htm or www mysite edu stimi htm Both htm and html are acceptable suffixes To limit browsing by time use the duration parameterlsd otherwise the subject can click Continue to proceed Any Java or ActiveX applications will be fully supported Optionally you can have navigation buttons appear while HTML pages are displayed You can display any or all of back forward home will return to the starting URL refresh
97. have a MediaLab question that asks subjects their race called race you could enter something like c race prime study stim race txt in the File Name field Then in your DirectRT input file you could refer to amp race as a stimulus When DirectRT finds this it will open the race txt file that MediaLab created and will present the subject s response as the stimulus See the DirectRT documentation regarding Input Files and Stim types for more detail 107 Adjusting Speaker Volume Automatically During Session Sometimes you will have multiple media clips in your session and they vary in volume Some play too loud others not loud enough Now you can embed an executable item at any point called volume exe located in the C MediaLab Utilities Sounds folder Copy this file into your experiment folder Anywhere in your experiment add an executable item and in the File Name field type volume exe In the parameters field enter c5 where 5 is a volume setting from 1 to 10 For max volume enter c10 and for min volume enter c1 Any integer value from 1 to 10 is permitted You ll get a brief please wait one moment message while the volume is adjusted after which you can click to continue Secondary Tasks Requiring Participants to Respond to Probes Visual auditory and TTL signal probes can be launched at any time from your questionnaire You can create a schedule of probes at either random or fixed intervals and get subjects response
98. have response options for any subsequent items in your questionnaire files like this 1 I would pick lt friend1 gt 2 I would pick lt friend2 gt This will work to insert prior responses from fill in the blank items scale responses multiple responses and any response xls variables you have calculated 10h See Also Datal7A Tutorial and Additional Samples A good way to get the feeling of how MediaLab works is to run a couple sample experiments and then look to see how they were put together If you are new to MediaLab you can get the gist of things by running through the quick on line tutorial From the main menu in MediaLab select Help gt On Line Tutorial The text from the six steps of the tutorial are also contained in this section see Sample 1 7 in case you would rather work from a hard copy if you are reading this online you can always right click any topic and select Print After that you can take a look at any of the additional sample experiments that illustrate the basic features of MediaLab They are contained in the Samples folder of the MediaLab program folder With the exception of the first basic sample all the samples are zipped and will need to be unzipped in order to use them If you are using Windows XP or later you can do this by right clicking on the zip file and selecting Extract All Other Sources for Samples www empirisoft com support see MediaLab Shared Experiments This area of our websi
99. he blue area of the MediaLab window in order to close the program Use Alternate Data File Click the button to its right to browse for a folder on your computer or network MediaLab will write the data to this folder instead of the experiment folder default This is especially useful if you want to run your experiment from a CD ROM Also because you can specify any location for the data using the alternate data folder you can choose to gather all of your data on a central computer on your network To specify another computer as the location for your data files you need to map the drive on the other computer as a drive letter on your computer running MediaLab e g as h or s you may want to ask your network administrator to help you with this if you are unfamiliar with mapping drives on other computers You can then specify the alternate data folder by using this mapped drive e g h medialabdata When MediaLab sees this it will create a folder within the alternate data folder with the same name as the experiment file e g h medialabdata experimenti and will write the data as it normally would to this folder Please be aware that specifying a data folder that is not located on an actual machine in the network i e Dropbox cloud storage would require an active internet connection anytime that data is being gathered Otherwise this could result in an error when trying to run your experiment because MediaLab will not be abl
100. he response options for a later item like this 1 I would pick lt friend1 gt 2 I would pick lt friend2 gt Whatever value was recorded for the friendi item will appear in place of lt friendi gt and whatever value was recorded for the friend2 item will appear in place of lt friend2 gt Remember that to insert a variable into an item that variable must first have a response recorded in the data file Using HTML for Labels If you want to create custom formatted or graphic labels for your scale response options you can enter an HTML file or URL in place of the standard text label This can be used to present formatted text or images beside each button Here is an example Paste this code into a text file and save it as labeli htm in your experiment folder You can preview the result by opening the file in Internet Explorer lt body style font 12pt arial color navy background ccccff margin Opx gt lt i gt Strongly lt i gt Agree lt body gt Enter label1 htm for your button label and this is how it will appear E Strongly Agree See also Questoinnaire que Files gt Labels 55 especially for information regarding valid input options and recoding response data 5 19 Write to Data File QuickInfo By checking this field data will be written to the data file When the value is unchecked MediaLab will not write a value for this variable to the data file and will not include the variable name in
101. here is no skipto value What would happen if we typed debrief into the skipto column for that item When the age item came up in the MediaLab session MediaLab would see that age is listed in the responses xls file It would see the skipto value of debrief and send the subject to the last item in the questionnaire because it is named debrief If you have used MediaLab s skipto function in the past this is pretty standard stuff Where it gets interesting is in the fact that you can now use the responses xis file to calculate skipto values Instead of placing a static value in the skipto column we can compute a variable based on what s been happening in the experiment Let s say that we want to use the subject s self esteem score to determine what happens next If they scored extremely high we want to administer a scale which measures socially desirable responding If they scored extremely low then we want to administer a depression inventory If they scored in the normal range we ll skip them to the end of the session Take a look at how we do this by checking out the formula in C26 that is the skipto value of the essay item ess1 IF B29 lt 2 dep IF B29 gt 4 sdes debrief In this formula you can see three items from the questionnaire file dep sdes and debrief These are our three skipto candidates The conditional logic of Excel is applied to say If self esteem is lt 2 then dep otherwise if self esteem is gt 4 then sd
102. hich files to present in the different experimental conditions See Questionnaire item types 43 for more details on specific file types Hints Double click on the File field to browse your hard drive and select files automatically Press Enter to manually edit a file path To be safe you can always specify the complete file path e g c experiments myexp myimage bmp If you specify a complete path remember to make sure the path is correct if you load the experiment files onto other computers Advanced Hints If the file is located in the same folder as your experiment file then you can simply enter the name of the file e g myimage bmp If the file is located in a subfolder that is located in the same folder as your experiment files then you can enter the name of the subfolder followed by the name of the file e g images myimage bmp Otherwise you need to specify the full path and name of the file you want to present e g c mypictures myimage bmp The advantage of placing the file in the experiment directory or a subfolder is that the experiment folder can then be moved to a different place and you won t have to worry about checking path names e g c d etc If the file is not in the same directory as the experiment and it s not in a subfolder then you must specify the complete path of the file e g c pictures myimage bmp Files may also be located on another computer on your local network MediaLab
103. iaLab v2014 File n Editl 12 Options 15 Window 13 3 1 File QuickInfo The following describes the functions provided in the File menu of the MediaLab Experiment Editor Commands New Experiment Creates a new experiment file for editing See Experiment Files 20 for details New Questionnaire Creates a new questionnaire file for editing See Questionnaire Files 34 for details Open Opens an existing experiment exp or questionnaire que file for editing Open Recent Select from the list of recently edited experiment and questionnaire files for editing Launch Explorer Runs Windows Explorer for file browsing See suggestion regarding the visibility of file extensions 51 e g que exp htm doc etc Launch DirectRT Runs DirectRT if you have it installed See www empirisoft com directrt aspx for details Save Saves the active file with its current name and location on your drive SaveAs Saves the active file but allows you to specify a new file name and or save location Page Setup Allows you to set print options such as margins portrait vs landscape and which columns to print See Printing 14 for details Print Preview Allows to preview printed output Print Prints the contents of the active file Exit Exits the MediaLab Experiment Editor MediaLab v2014 3 2 Edit QuickInfo The following describes the functions provided in the Edit menu
104. ication will be run in a MediaLab v2014 maximized window e g cmax or cmyarguments max left position top position optional These parameters allow you to place an image or video exactly where you want it by specifying the top left corner of its position relative to the top left corner of the MediaLab window If you wish to see exactly where the top left corner of your image will be placed you can find the following guide by clicking on Help gt Show Location Points when you first open MediaLab on your computer 100 200 300 400 500 60 100 Screen locations may vary depending on the display settings e g resolution and small vs large fonts For the current screen settings on this computer these location guides indicate 200 where media will be located on the screen when you use the t op and or I eft parameters for a given item in your questionnaire or experiment See help on Parameters for more information on 300 placing items See also Sizing Videos and Images in the help menu e g This image is located with a t jop parameter of 100 and a I eft parameter of 200 400 This window shows you exactly where the top left pixel of your image will be placed The top and left pixel values are marked every hunderd pixels along the top and left borders respectively The unit of measurement is pixels so placement will depend on what resolution you are running on your computer MediaLab attempts to scale m
105. ich questionnaire or set of questionnaires is assigned to each condition Additional files can be specified simply for the purpose of having this flexibility in the case that your application requires it 4 2 Overview Window QuickInfo In the overview editor you can scroll through the basic information regarding your experiment In this mode you can see and define which files are presented to subjects in your different experimental conditions and the order in which they re to occur Click on a specific area for help on that topic j _sample1 exp eni Emmer exp olx i r 1 rofsetestemge L 2 100 e 2 2 00 selfesteem que MediaLab v2014 Hints Double click on any condition or position field and the file details will be displayed for the file at that location Double click on any file field and you will be able to search your drives for the file you re looking to put there If you want to edit the file name field without being prompted for a file just highlight the cell and press enter to edit it Info Allows you to save summary information and detailed notes regarding your experiment The title and comments are for the Editor s reference only The comments field has a very large capacity if you wish to exploit it Details Allows you to set various options for the presentation of your experimental files Explore a specific area for help on that topic File Details sample1 exp self
106. ile called question_order csv in the ByQuestionnairel 7 data folder The first row is the order of files i e from the exp file and the remaining rows are the question orders for each questionnaire in the order they actually occurred with a time stamp written to verify the time at which each questionnaire was started How can I tell exactly when an item was presented i e in real time By entering in the Parameter s fieldl 54 for any item in a questionnaire you can have MediaLab write a timestamp at the onset of the item When you do this a timestamp will be appended to a file called timestamps csv in the data folder It will include the subject id the variable name the time at which the item started e g 12 23 22 the milliseconds elapsed from the beginning of the experiment and the milliseconds passed since the last timestamp Where is my essay data Because large quantities of text do not play well with most data files the responses of subjects to essay items 44 will be written to their own separate data files located in the main Data folder The file will be named after the item name you use for the essay For example if you have an essay item named ess1 then look for your essay data in a file called essi txt in the main data folder The responses of all subject to this question will be appended there along with their subject and condition IDs Can I change the values written to the data file On scale response ite
107. ile has been created it can be copied and simply dropped into any other experiment This makes creating new experiments extremely easy when certain components are re used e g a questionnaire that measures a personality trait or a questionnaire that contains a mood inducing video followed with manipulation checks etc You can also run a questionnaire file on its own 9 but experiment files need other flies like questionnaires to run Remember that MediaLab help is context sensitive When you are creating a questionnaire and you want to know what the purpose of a particular field is just place your cursor in the field and then hit F1 The help files have been designed to take you right to the relevant information 5 2 Overview Window QuickInfo In the overview editor you can scroll through the basic information for each item in your questionnaire file In this mode you can see and define which items are presented to participants and the order in which they re to occur Click on a specific area for help on that topic MediaLab v2014 li eee feel that I am a person of 3 00 rsez Scale Response I feel that I have a number of 4 00 rse3 Scale Response All in all I am inclined to feel 5 00 rse4 Scale Response I am able to do things as well 6 00 rse5 Scale Response I feel that I do not have much 7 00 rse6 Scale Response I take a positive attitude On the whole I am satisfied 9 00 rseg Scale Response I w
108. ing the space bar as a part of that input Since the space bar is also used in MediaLab to continue with the next item this can cause a conflict If this applicable to your HTML file you can add a k 1 parameter to disable the space bar as a means to proceed to next item Track Key Presses When used with an essay item this parameter allows you to record every time a given key is pressed over a given time period Simply add the key parameter to indicate that you want to track a key press response over the duration of the essay You need to tell MediaLab what key you want by giving it a code e g k57 will have MediaLab track the 9 key There is a utility included in the Utilities folder called keycodes exe It will quickly tell you the code for any key on the keyboard including function and non character keys Just double click the keycodes exe program and hit any key to get its code These codes are NOT the same as the more extensive set of DirectRT key codes Here s an example You want to track every time the subject hits the 9 key over a 30 second interval Run keypress exe and hit the 9 key You will see that its code is 57 Using an essay item enter the parameters d30 k57 This means the item will be displayed for 30 seconds and track every time the user hits the 9 key Medialab will write the key tracking data to a file called the same thing as the essay variable name file but with keypress csv added to it You can open the data file in
109. ing the BackGround 39 BackSoundl aay or BackVideol4N fields on any Instructions screen Instruction items also allow you to specify the onset parameterl6f like other items to create a delay before the text appears Note that the response timel 6d if you choose to record it will include the onset value To control the amount of time that instructions are presented you can use the duration parameterl 6 as you would with other item types Instruction items also offer a unique option you can use to create a minimum exposure time On any instruction item if you use a negative duration value e g d 10 then the Continue button will not appear until that many seconds have passed You can use this option to ensure that subjects are exposed to some information for a minimum amount of time after which they may proceed when ready By using the x parameter 6h you can require that a password be entered to continue beyond the instruction screen This is a handy way to prevent subjects from continuing after a certain point without experimenter intervention Note that you can also seta password for the end of all experiments in the Preferences 83 section of the toolbar of the main MediaLab menu Movie Presents a video file By default MediaLab will play any video file that is supported by the Windows Media Player This typically includes mpg avi asf wmv dat and mpv video formats You can specify the location of the video on the screen u
110. ion Position QuickInfo Identifies the order in which files are presented in each condition Values Any number Decimal values are allowed MediaLab v2014 Purpose This field determines the order in which files are presented in each condition MediaLab will automatically sort the files in each condition by the values you specify in the Position field You can manually sort the file at any time by using the Sort 23 button Hints To add a new file between two existing files e g at positions 2 and 3 assign it a position value between these values e g 2 5 and then click the Sort button After sorting you can automatically renumber all of your items as sequential integers by clicking the Renumber 23 button Important MediaLab will first sort by the condition 2 amp field and then by the position field so be sure that you identify the condition of the file before you sort 45 File QuickInfo Names of the files to be presented in each condition Value Any file name ending with the following three letter extensions que MediaLab Questionnaire 34 htm html HTML files on your hard drive or the web doc wpd Microsoft Word or WordPerfect documents pps Microsoft PowerPoint shows bmp jpg gif Images Wwav mp3 Sounds avi mpg Videos exe Programs including old DOS Windows 3 1 Windows 95 and Windows XP CSV DirectRT Input file Purpose The File Name field simply tells MediaLab w
111. ion Note that you will probably want to create a unique list of subject ID s and conditions for each computer to prevent redundancy Finally an alternative way of using the AutoStart feature is to type select subject as the first line in the autostart txt file If you do this then MediaLab will prompt you only for the subject 1D It will then look up the condition for that subject ID fromthe list and run it automatically This is useful if you want to have a constant autostart txt file on all of your computers and don t mind keeping track of which subjects still need to be run It simply eliminates the need to keep track of which conditions to assign MediaLab v2014 autostart txt Notepad File Edit Format View Help select subject Advanced Hints for AutoStart Using a substitute txtl 84 file you can have a blank message defined for the end of session event If MediaLab sees that you have no message and you are using an autostart file then it will proceed automatically with the next session without asking if you want the next session run it will simply start Doing so requires ctrl alt delete when you finally want to escape Note about ending sessions early The autostart txt file will only be updated if a session is completed You can end a session in two ways One is to press ctrl alt delete and choosing to shutdown the MedialLb program this will shutdown the session no data will be saved and the autostart file will remai
112. ion Wording The next item again is the same as the first except now we add the top parameterl 6d which tells MediaLab that you want the buttons to start at a specific distance from the top With this you can move the buttons up or down as much as you like Note that you can use the top and width parameters together to create a horizontal scale at a specified height Click Continue or press the space bar to see the item Getting Subjects Attention Sometimes after answering many questions the items can start to blend in with one another A couple things you can do to minimize this You can add an onset parameterl6f which delays the display of the question wording In this case we ve added 01000 which means there will be an approximate 1000ms delay before the question wording appears We ve also added a QuickStyle parameter 5 QuickStyle filesP8 can be created in the MediaLab preferences menu They contain font and color information In this case we apply a style file called green mlp located in the experiment folder by entering the parameter value of green Creating More Room For Response Labels In this item we have some very long response labels To create more space for them we can double triple or even quadruple the spacing of the buttons using the spacing parameter 6A In this case we ve entered s2 to double space the buttons Any value decimals included between 1 and 5 is acceptable Turning off the QuickStyle and Im
113. ion q 62 TimeStamp 59 1995 2014 Empirisoft Corporation Top t 60 TTL Signal 62 Width w 63 Password to End Option 84 Password x Parameter 31 57 Path Names 9 104 Points p Parameter 31 57 Position of Items 64 Power Point Show Experiment File 26 Parameters exp 31 Questionnaire Item 48 Preferences Experiment Editor 15 Preferences MediaLab 82 Autostart Files 87 Disable Clear Data 84 Disable System Key Sequences 83 Double Click to close MediaLab 83 Fonts and Colours 83 Foreign Fonts 85 Hide MediaLab Rats 83 Load Other Preferences File 84 Modify Message Text 86 Mute MediaLab Sounds 84 On the fly Editing of Word Documents 83 Password to End Option 84 QuickStyles 84 Saving Preferences 84 Supporting Applications 84 Unique Machine Code 84 Use Alternate Data File 83 Printing 16 Probe Task 106 Q Question Wording 53 Question q Parameter 31 57 Questionnaire Editor 34 Questionnaire Files 6 26 34 53 BackGround 39 BackSound 40 BackVideo 41 Custom 43 DirectRT 43 Editing 34 Editing Tips 17 Essay 44 Questionnaire Files 6 26 34 53 Executables 44 Filename 41 53 Fill in the Blank 44 GoBack 42 HTML 45 Image File 46 Inquisit 47 Instructions 47 Item Types 43 Item Wording 53 Labels 55 Movie 47 Multiple Response 47 Name 56 Omit Conditions 57 On Line Ratings 48 Overview Window 35 Parameters 57 Position of Items 64 Power Point Show 48 Present n ofx items 66 Printing 16 Quitting
114. ion wording and response options 7 of subsequent items You can limit the response to a number by using the range r parameterl 6 Both positive and negative values are permitted when using the range parameter For example to accept only a valid age you might use r16 125 which would require a response between 16 and 125 The user will be prompted to enter a number within that range if they fail to do so You can also use the mask m parameterl f to specify the number of characters allowed in the response and whether each is fixed or free For example the parameter m will provide five blanks The parameter m ck will offer three blanks followed by ck Fixing characters in this way allows subjects to offer partial responses such as in a word completion task You can also combine the range and mask parameters For example the parameters m _ r100000000 999999999 could be used to prompt the subject for a valid nine digit social security number In cases where you need more space for a fill in the blank item you can use the optional space s parameter 64 to tell MediaLab how many lines of text you want to allow For example a parameter of s3 will provide three lines of text instead of one the default Note that if you specify more than 1 line the Enter key will not send the subject to the next item but rather to the next line in the text box The Escape key may be used as an alternative to the Enter key in suc
115. ions that can help In MediaLab select Preferences and then Edit Preferences to choose the a compatible font for use when running your experiment MediaLab supports most double byte fonts such as Aria Also under Preferences you can select the Character Set option to select a script that works best with your language and font Finally also under Character Set is an option to right align the text for question wording and open ended responses Finally in the Experiment Editor under Options you can select an Editor Font and chose a font that works with the characters you need while editing your experiment This step should be taken after setting the font and script preferences in the main MediaLab window Note that if you are designing experiments in a language other than English you can also modify the messages that MediaLab displays so that they are in your preferred language see below We can also help you with a custom Continue and Go Back button for your language let us know if you need this In fact there is already a series of Continue and Go Back graphics in various languages located in the C MediaLab Graphics folder If you MediaLab v2014 would like to use them simply replace C MediaLab Graphics continue bmp and C MediaLab Graphics goback bmp with the ones located in the language subfolder of your choice e g Chinese German Greek Japanese Spanish Modify message text MediaLab presents various messages during an
116. ire etc you need to specify where that file is located There are two ways to do this using absolute or relative paths Absolute Paths If the file you are presenting exists anywhere outside of the experiment folder then you will have to specify an absolute file path An absolute file path is the exact location of the file e g c mypictures myimage bmp You can find the absolute pathway ofa file by right clicking it and selecting Properties Next to the word Location in the General tab of the window that opens you will find the absolute pathway with everything except the file name at the end Simply copy the entire pathway next to the word Location paste it where you need it and be sure to add your file name here without the quotation marks to the end of the pathway you copied Remember if the file is not in the same directory as the experiment or it s not in a subfolder in the experiment file folder then you must specify the complete path of the file Make sure that any absolute file paths you use will still be valid if you copy your experiment to another computer Relative Paths If the file is located in the same folder as your experiment file then you can simply enter just the name of the file e g myimage bmp If the file is located in a subfolder that is located in the same folder as your experiment files then you can enter the name of the subfolder followed by the name of the file e g images myimage bmp Yo
117. irements For most uses MediaLab v2014 will run well on any PC system or Mac e g via BootCamp running Windows XP or Windows 7 At least 256 Mb of RAM is recommended If large experiments and or large multi media files are going to be used frequently then additional RAM is advisable though not necessary Video cards with at least 16 Mb of video memory also are recommended It is recommended that you also install Microsoft Office on machines that will be running MediaLab These programs allow MediaLab to present documents fully formatted by Word and slide shows prepared in PowerPoint and allow you to execute a number of features using the conditional logic of Excel Although MediaLab will work fine without them these programs perform cooperatively with MediaLab to produce some very impressive functionality Microsoft s Internet Explorer version 7 or later is required in order for MediaLab to present custom items and other HTML formatted pages whether stored locally or on the internet Finally it is necessary to have a spreadsheet application e g Excel SPSS installed in order to view the data files produced by MediaLab although the txt and csv data files can also be viewed in any text editor Backward Compatibility If you are accustomed to using a previous version of MediaLab v1998 v3 v2012 you should be able to continue using v2014 without having to learn anything new v2014 is backward compatible so that MediaLab experiments fro
118. ish I could have more 10 00 rse9 Scale Response I certainly feel useless at At times I think that I am no 12 00 ssn Fill in the Blank Please enter the last four Please indicate your gender 4 Please tell us three of your 15 00 comment Essay Thankyou In the space a WIN ja e 5 6 Z y Hints Double click on any position or name field and the details will be displayed for that item When your are editing in the overview window double clicking will allow you to edit any field or will pull open a file search box if a file is required If you want to edit a field that requires a filename but do not want to open a file search dialog then simply highlight the field and press enter to edit the field directly Info Allows you to save summary information and detailed notes regarding your questionnaire The title and comments are for the Editor s reference only The comments field has a very large capacity if you wish to exploit it Details Allows you to set various options for the presentation of your questionnaire items Click on a specific area for help on that topic Item Details selfesteem que ral PF Wie ree n I feel that I am a person of worth at least on an equal basis with others Scale Response o 1 Disagree strongly Disagree somewhat Disagree a little Agree a little Agree somewhat 4 ia ETB LU
119. item by typing the appropriate variable name surrounded by lt gt within any question wording text For example if you had previously asked subjects about their race using a fill in the blank question or a scale response and you had called this variable race then you could insert the subjects response in a subsequent question wording like this What percentage of your friends are lt race gt For scale responses the text label of the selected response is used Apply parameters to question wording You can add parameters in the question wording itself specific to the question wording on any item that supports question wording You can add top t and left 1 parameters 6 to define the questions location on the screen as well as width w and height h parameters 63 to define boundaries of the presentation box of the wording To do so use the key word param at the end of your question wording followed by your parameters in parentheses For example you could enter the following in the Questoin Wording File Name field Please answer the following questions When you re done feel proud you did a good thing param t200 1100 w200 h100 This would cause the the question wording to appear 200 pixels down and 100 pixels to the right of the top left corner of the screen in a box three lines high and five words wide You may have to try a few combinations of settings before you find one you like You can also add an a parameter to set the
120. itions including questionnaire files Questionnaires differ from the other file types in that they are a single self contained file full of instructions for MediaLab These instructions can tell MediaLab to present various files e g images sounds videos executables Word documents PowerPoint shows HTML pages but questionnaires also contain the instructions for MediaLab to ask questions and gather data MediaLab questionnaires provide instructions for essay type open ended responses multiple choice responses with single or multiple response options multiple response questions e g select all that apply fill in the blank answers continuous on line ratings thought and recall listings and thought ratings where subjects rate there own open ended responses on dimensions you define To learn more about questionnaire files see the page about Key Concepts of MediaLab Questionnaire Files 34 Running the Experiment 1 Once you have defined your experimental conditions and created the files which it is going to present simply click the Se ect and Run Experiment command from the Run menu of MediaLab After finding and double clicking on your experiment you will be asked which condition you want to run and what subject ID you want written to the data file The rest is easy MediaLab runs the experiment gathers the data and writes it to all to a single data file that can be read directly by Excel or SPSS unlimited variables MediaLa
121. ized order in which they are presented MediaLab v2014 5 17 Skip To QuickInfo The Skip to field allows the Editor to create simple or advanced skip patterns in their questionnaire Details Conditional Skipping based on Scale Responses After a scale response MediaLab checks it for it corresponding Skip To value If the value is none it proceeds to the next question Ifit has any other value it assumes that value is a variable name and skips each subsequent question until it finds the one with the variable name that matches the Skip to value it s looking for Skipped items will be assigned missing values in the data set Unconditional Skipping In some cases you may want to skip over items unconditionally Unlike conditional skipping you can do this with any item type For unconditional skipping from a scale response simply place the same variable name in each Skip To field of all the response choices For all other item types simply enter the variable name you wish to skip to in the single Skip To field Unconditional skipping is especially useful for rejoining subjects who have been conditionally skipped to various points in the questionnaire so that they end up at a common place When they are done their special sections they can be joined up to the same question by putting an unconditional skip item at the end of each of their custom sections In each case they are all skipped to the same item and continue on with the same se
122. k 1 parameterl6 to disable keyboard navigation for that item This does not apply to Custom items made with HTML because custom items do not allow for keyboard navigation Secret Keys When test running an experiment you may want to skip over various items files or questionnaires that you already know are working You also may have timed items that you don t want to wait for while you re testing things out For this reason there a few secret key combinations that will allow you skip around All use the right or left arrow keys on your keyboard in combination with either or both of the Alt key or Ctrl key Press each key down and hold it until each of the remaining key s is pressed Ctrl Left Arrow Go back to previous question in a questionnaire Ctrl Right Arrow Skips to next question in a questionnaire Shift Alt Right Arrow Quits the questionnaire or other current file Ctrl Alt Right Arrow Quits the experiment in progress Notes In previous versions the combination Alt Right Arrow would end the current questionnaire or file Because this combination is now commonly used in web browsing we added a shift key to the combination to avoid accidental endings Some item types that involve videos and or HTML may require that you first click on the outer border of the MediaLab space in order to use the secret keys This is because the Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer engines will sometimes intercept keystrokes and
123. kets as follows Hello World This is data for MediaLab The comdata txt file will contain the data Hello World This is data for MediaLab This function requires that you create a file called comdata txt and place it in your experiment folder If MediaLab sees this file it will automatically watch for and save any serial data that is surrounded in brackets In order for MediaLab to use the proper serial port settings you should also include a comport txt file as described above If you do not want any key mappings it could simply look like this comPort baudRate parity dataBit stopBit T 19200 1 871 input code 1 255 response value 1 12 0 0 Sending Streams of Serial Data If you are using a comport txt file you can also send a string of data to the serial port by adding the string as a parameter value for any given questionnaire item The string should be enclosed within braces and angular brackets lt gt like this lt 112340 gt or lt RED gt When included in the parameters for a 5pt scale response for example your parameters field might look like this p5 lt SCALE1 gt In this example so long as you have a valid comport txt file in your experiment folder see above then MediaLab would send SCALE1i to the appropriate port at the onset of this scale response item Again if you do not want any key mappings comport txt could simply look like this comPort baudRate parity dat
124. lay is set at 800x600 than when it is set at 640x480 and so forth Some documents may appear without regard to their top and left margins i e the text will appear to the very left and very top of the screen If you experience this don t bother to adjust your margins Instead select the text and increase the paragraph indentation on the menu select format gt paragraph For extra space at the top insert hard returns This solves the problem Microsoft Word may warn you about macros when MediaLab attempts to present a Word file You can choose to disable macros or you can save your documents without macros Either way if this happens you can tell Word not to warn you about this every time so that this window does not pop up every time MediaLab displays a document with macros in it MediaLab uses a 2 second keyboard mouse cancellation buffer for Word WordPerfect documents to avoid accidental skipping of Word documents This is done because Word documents may take a second or two to load and subjects may continue repeatedly while this is happening Note that Word Document item is also capable of displaying many other file types than just Word Documents If you have a file of any type that you want to display in MediaLab try specifying it as the filename for Word Document items see also HTML items above MediaLab will attempt to cooperate with the file s usual program to have it displayed correctly e g an Adobe Acrobat file
125. ld is checked in the Details menu see below the response time for the item will be written to the main data file In the data input file which MediaLab creates a t will be appended to the beginning of that item name 5 in order to create a new variable name for the response time You can leave this field unchecked if ou have no interest in assessing the response time for a given item Also see the Data 70 section of the manual for more details MediaLab v2014 JV Write data TT Allow GoBack Help Wording File Position di JV Reaction time Write as Text 2 A none Text Label Type Scale Response y Variable Name none Background none Backsound none Backvideo none Randomize W none Randomize B none Parameter s fps File Name none Omit none Viewing Data By default data files are written to a Data subfolder located in the same folder as your experiment exp file For example if your experiment were c experiments test test exp then your data would be saved to c experiments test data If this data subfolder does not exist when you run a session MediaLab will create it The main data file will be given the same name as the experiment file but with different file extensions to indicate the different formats e g txt for the SPSS text formatted data sav for the native SPSS data file and csv for the comma delimited text files Data from essay items 44 and on line rating items 48 will also be locat
126. ll of the items you want to keep together For example if you have three groups of ten files in one condition and you want to randomize the order in which these 3 sets of files are presented then assign each group a different number and make sure all the files within each group share the same number for that group The files within each group will all stay together but the groups themselves will be randomly ordered All files assigned a 0 or none will not move Note that all files within a group must be sequential in the given condition Example In one condition you want to present a Word document five randomly ordered sets of five images and a final Word document Assign a value of 0 or none to the Word documents to keep them where they are a 1 to the images in the first set a 2 to the images in the second set and so forth That s it To randomize the order that the files are presented within each group see Randomize Within GroupsT 29 Hints Use of the RBG field in the experiment files randomizes the order of groups of questionnaires and related files whereas using the RBG fieldlsMRandomize Between Groups 65 in the questionnaire files 64 randomizes the presentation of groups items that generate the actual data Thus use this functionality when you want to randomize the groups higher level elements of your experiment the questionnaires themselves EM 4 11 Parameters QuickInfo Parameters supply additional informatio
127. lt and alternative program options Two types of files can be created and edited here The first is the MediaLab Preferences File mlp which contains font and colour combinations as well as a number of general program options The second is the MediaLab QuickStyle File mlq which contains ONLY font and colour information Normally you would have just one Preferences file usually default mip which is loaded automatically and many QuickStyle files This is because you can only have one Preferences file loaded during an experiment but you can apply multiple QuickStyle files throughout your experiment by requesting them in your questionnaires or experiment files If you do not create or request any QuickStyle files during your experiment then the default fonts and colors in your Preferences file will be used Preferences 83 Fonts and Colors 83 On the fly editing of Word Documents 83 Hide MediaLab Rats 83 Disable System Key Sequences 83 Double Click to Close MediaLab 83 Use Alternate Data Folderl 83 Use Unique Machine Codes Password to Exit Experiments 82 Where to Find Supporting Applications 84 Load Other Preferences File s Disable Clear Data 82 Mute MediaLab Sounds 8A Quick Styles 84 Character Set amp Foreign Fonts 85 Changing Default Feedback and Message Text 8 AutoStart files to Automate Subject and Condition IDs 87 8 1 Preferences and Options Fonts and Colors You can change the fonts and colors
128. lue to all of the items you want to keep together For example if you have five sets of ten items and you want to randomize the order in which these 5 groups of items are presented then assign each group a different number in the RBG field and make sure all the items within each group share the same number for that group The items within each group will all stay together but the groups themselves will be randomly ordered Items assigned a O or none will not move Note that all items within a group must be sequential in the questionnaire Example In your questionnaire you want to present 1 an instruction screen 2 five scale response items 3 three fill in the blank items and 4 a final Word document Whether the scale responses come first or the fill in the blanks come first is to be random Assign an RBG value of 0 or none to the instruction screen and Word document to keep them where they are a 1 to each of the five scale response items and a 2 to each of the five fill in the blank items When MediaLab runs that questionnaire file the instruction screen will always come first followed randomly by either all 5 of the scale response items or the three fill in the blank items and always end with the Word document item To randomize the order of the items within each group see Randomize Within Groups 64 Note For ease of analysis variables will be written to the data file in the order the occur in the questionnaire not in the random
129. m all previous versions should run the same as they always have without requiring modification Of course be sure to confirm compatibility for yourself with any old experiments prior to scheduling participants As we continue to updated v2014 with new fixes and features we will post the changes on our support site at http www empirisoft com support forumdisplay php 50 MediaLab v2014 Version History Installation To install MediaLab download and run m 2014 x x exe where x x is the specific release available from http empirisoft com Download aspx index 4 If installing from a CD ROM then simply double click on the m 2014 x x exe file located on the CD The installation program will guide you through the set up procedure After the setup is complete follow the security instructions below to gain authorization for the workstation to run MediaLab 1 Note to Network Administrators Users will require read write access to the MediaLab folder following installation If they do not have read write permission for the folder the license check may fail and will cause a new code to be generated The installation should grant these rights to all users automatically but if not then they may need to be set as follows by someone with administrator level access Step 1 When logged on as an administrator this can be done by right clicking on the MediaLab folder and selecting Properties and then Security and ensuring that regular users have Read Wri
130. main and one as the background To specify the location of the background image place values for the top and left parameters 32 in parentheses after the file name For example typing myimage bmp t50 1200 will place the background image 50 pixels from the top and 200 pixel from the left If you want to present images with Word or HTML documents you can insert them directly into the Word or HTML documents 4 7 BackSound QuickInfo If you would like a sound played in the background while another file type is presented then simply type or place in the name of a compatible sound file in this field Play a wave or mpeg mp3 sound file in the background when the current file is presented Value Any sound file with a wav or mp3 extension Purpose Backsounds are sounds files that play while another file is being presented Keep in mind that MediaLab will play backsound files to their completion This allows for a backsound to play through multiple items if you care to structure things that way To have MediaLab wait for the duration of the sound file and then automatically proceed use the delay parameter for the item and specify the length of the sound clip in seconds e g fora 30 second sound clip use d30 You can find out the length of a sound clip by right clicking on the file in Windows Explorer and selecting Properties 4 8 BackVideo QuickInfo Display a video in the background as the current file is presented Value
131. mentation for MediaLab v2014 You can search this documentation using Adobe Acrobat s search tool or by using the table of contents or index at the end ofthe document We have designed this document for easy printing from Acrobat should you prefer a hard copy manual Note that all of the information contained in this document can also be accessed via the interactive help system located in MediaLab s Help menu or by clicking on the file named interactive users guide in the C MediaLab Help folder after installation If you are new to MediaLab we suggest you start by running the on line tutorial from the Help menu of the main program window You can also access a number of additional zipped samples 7 1in the C MediaLab Samples folder If you have a question that these help files do not answer please visit our support site at support empirisoft com or visit www empirisoft com company aspx to contact us directly 1 1 Features Examples of General Features a Define as many experimental conditionsI 6 as you like a Flexible randomization features Randomize items within a single group s4 and the order in which groups of items 65 are presented Randomization routines at both the experiment level 24 and within questionnaires 64 a Simple and complex skip patterns 68 Base skips on any prior response or even combinations of prior responses 2 Calculate scores and other variables i while a session is running present them on
132. mount of time you can use the d parameter followed by the number of seconds you want that file to be activated Once the amount of time in the d parameter has passed the experiment file will automatically proceed to the next file For example if you wanted a questionnaire file activated for 30 seconds and then have the experiment file automatically proceed to the next file in it you would specify d30 for that first questionnaire file Questionnaire files also offer a special option you can use to create a special countdown clock to tell subjects how much time they have left to complete the questionnaire On any questionnaire file if you use a negative duration value e g d 300 then a countdown clock will appear at the start of the questionnaire showing how many second are left before the questionnaire will automatically end The clock will start with the absolute value of the duration you specify e g d 300 will put 300 seconds on the clock If you are using a countdown timer for a questionnaire try to avoid using duration parameters on items within that questionnaire that could conflict with your countdown e g using the same number of seconds in the d parameters for the questionnaire in the experiment file and an itemin that same questionnaire file Note that you can place a single itemina questionnaire in order to get the countdown timer with a single item Examples Image To set the top left corner of an image to the center of a 6
133. ms 5A and thought rating items 5 the default value written to the data file is always the ordinal value of the response option For example if the first option is chosen then a 1 is written to the data file even if the button label read A 5 or 0 For multiple response items the default value of a chosen response is always 1 or 0 if that response option is not chosen For all of these item types you can specify an alternate value for any given response option This simply saves you from having to recode the data after collecting it To specify an alternate value specify it in squiggly brackets after the text label like so 1 strongly disagree 2 2 disagree 1 none 3 neutral 0 none 4 agree 1 none 5 strongly agree 2 none Note that the value can be text or numeric although numeric is recommended If you use text make sure the Write as Textl6 option is checked for the item Can I change the value used for missing data By default 99 is used as the value for missing data Because most item types are either open ended or limited to a numeric value of 12 99 is usually safe However if you suspect 99 might be a dangerous value for your particular study you can choose an alternate value Simply create a text txt file in your experiment folder and name it missing txt and on the first line of that file enter the alternate value It must be numeric What is the Clear Data button for and can I disable it When you make
134. ms and batch files Examples of Flexible Questionnaire Design Scale responses 50 with up to 12 closed ended responses Multiple responsel 4 select all that apply responses Fill in the blankl 44 responses free or restricted Ranking 4 allows subjects to drag and drop words phrases or pictures to sort them by any criterion Essay typel 44 responses Thought listings 5A and recall listings 44 Have subjects rate their own thought listingl 54 responses on any dimension Easy text based instructions 4A for any question Voice Responses 5 A with optional voice response times Present HTML 45 and other web pages with active hyperlinks Internet Explorer browsing engine can display anything that IE can handle Track browsing behaviorl52 as subjects navigate through local HTML files or the World Wide Web Track every URL the subject follows and record in and out times Present Microsoft Word 5 and Microsoft PowerPointl 48 shows within your experiment or questionnaires Gather on line continuous rating datal 48 during audio and video clips a Skip pattern capability 6 when a particular closed ended response is given Questionnaire items can be omitted 5A in specified conditions Easily modify and re use 34 your questionnaires in other experiments Option of self paced or time limited responsesT 6d Allow subjects to return to previous questions 42 if necessary Embed subjects responses 53 in subsequent q
135. n and functionality for the presentation of certain files In the experiment Editor all parameters are optional but offer the user some nice flexibility Parameters can be given in any order must be separated by commas and the entire set must be enclosed in a single set of parentheses Note that parameters also can be set for background 24 backsound 28 and backvideo 2 files following the same rules except that their parameters are entered after the filename rather than in the parameters field Parameters quickstyle 3 c command line arguments 3 d duration for timed items 33 l left position 32 t top position 32 w width 32 Parameters for Different File Types Questionnairel 43 duration quickstyle Executable command line arguments HTML duration Image File top left duration Movie top left width duration PowerPoint Show none Sound File duration Word Document duration Details quicksty le optional To apply custom color and font settings to a questionnaire you can create a QuickStyle 84 file from the Preferences menu To apply it to a particular questionnaire file you can enter the name of the QuickStyle file precede by a E g mystyle command line arguments optional For executables that allow for command line arguments you can specify the arguments you want to send with the c parameter Just type in the arguments preceded bya c cmyargument Follow any arguments with max and the appl
136. n independently randomize another group of items by assigning themalla 2 another group with 3s and so forth Example In one condition you want to present 1 Word document 2 five images randomly ordered 3 five sounds randomly ordered and 4 a final Word document Assign an RWG value of 0 or none to the Word documents to keep them where they are a 1 to the five images and 2 to the five sounds That s it To randomize the order that groups of files are presented e g whether the images or the sounds are presented first see Randomize Between Groups 30 Hints Use of the RWG field in the experiment files randomizes the order of questionnaires and related files whereas using the RWG field in the questionnaire files 64 randomizes the presentation of items that generate the actual data Thus use this functionality when you want to randomize the higher level elements of your experiment the questionnaires themselves MediaLab v2014 4 10 Randomize Between Groups QuickInfo All files sharing the same RBG value define a group of questionnaires or files to be kept together If multiple groups are defined then MediaLab will present them in a random order Value Any positive integer value Purpose You may wish to randomly order and present entire groups of files in a given condition e g randomizing whether personality questionnaires or demographic questionnaires come first To do this assign the same RBG value to a
137. n it to open it in the Experiment Editor This is where you can have some fun Try changing the question wordings Double click on ae number 64 to see the details for any item Try this with a Scale Response item 50 See where it says p6 in the parameters field Try changing this to p9 See how you now S 9 response options for the questions You can add the additional options in the Labell 55 and Text Labell 6A fields Close the Details window by clicking on the big checkmark in the lower right Try adding an item of your own In the first open position enter a new position number of 4 5 Enter an item name 5 such as MyVar Double click on the ItemType field and choose Fill in the blank 44 from the pull down menu Finally enter your question wording 53 in the Question Wording File Name field e g Please tell me what your favourite food is Now click Sortl 3R and then Renumberl3A See how the item is now positioned between the 4th and 5th items This happened because you gave the question a position value of 4 5 Now click Savel 38 and OK to close the questionnaire Now we need to add your new questionnaire to the experiment filel 20 From the File menu select Open and open the Sample1 exp experiment file Let s replace the selfesteem questionnaire in Condition 1 with your new questionnaire Simply double click on se festeem que in Condition 1 Position 1 When the dialog box opens select you new questionnaire See how it ha
138. n this example try clicking multiple answers When you re done click Continue or press the spac ebar Multiple Response items use all the same parameters as Scale Items 58 Note that on this item we turn off the QuickStyle 84 we applied earlier using the off parameter You should see that MediaLab reverts to the default colours and fonts Inserting HTML in Place of Question Wording and or Response Labels Want more control over formatting You can create an HTML file and display it in place of the usual question wording and even the text labels on the response buttons eA In the experiment folder there is a subfolder called sp This folder contains the HTML files and media In the Background 3 field see that we specify that we want MediaLab to display sp rse htm an HTML file in the SP folder When we do this we have to specify the area for it to cover using the top and lefts as well as the width and heightle3 parameters We are also going to display html files in place of the response labels To do this we enter the name of the HTML files in place of the usual Text Labels To allow for more space to accommodate the larger HTML labels we have triple spaced the buttons using the spacing parameter 62 s3 We have also specified that the scale buttons be moved over to the right and upwards using the Left and Top parameters Finally since the HTML files have a white background we have applied a QuickStyle 84 file white mlq here that ins
139. n to the previous questionnaire item Values True checked or False unchecked Purpose In the details window of a questionnaire file you can check the GoBack option for any questionnaire item If you check the GoBack option for any given item then that item will be provide participants with a Go Back button which can be clicked to return to the previous questionnaire item This is especially useful if you are concerned about participants entering responses they might want to go back and change However be aware that only the participants last response to an item is recorded in the data files if an item is encountered for a second time after the Go Back button is used any previous responses to that item are not recorded in the data If you check the GoBack option for a sequence of items then participants will be able to back up through the questionnaire Note though that the GoBack function is limited to the active questionnaire file and will not let participants return to a previous questionnaire file from that experiment file 5 8 Item Type Item Types Customl 88 Instructions 4A Sound File 50 DirectRT 43 Movie 4 Thought Listing 5A Essayl 44 Multiple Response 4A Thought Rating 5 h Executable 42 On Line Rating 48 Voice Response 5A Fill in the Blank 44 PowerPoint Show 48 WebTrackerl 54 HTML 48 Ranking 49 Word Document 52 Image File 461 Recall List 4 WordPerfect Docl 54 Inquisit Session 4 4 Scale Response
140. n unchanged The other is to press ctrl alt right which is the key combination to end a session If you end a session in this manner the data wil be written including missing values for questions that were never answered and you will be asked if you would like the autostart file to be reset as it was before the session Answering yes to this will prevent MediaLab from scratching this session off its to do list Overview MediaLab allows you to create your own custom items using HTML Using the Custom item type you can specify any web browser file local or internet in the Question Wording File Name field If and when a post event occurs MediaLab will save any submitted data that you like and then continue on to the next item in the questionnaire In order for a posted variable to be saved with the regular data files its variable name simply needs to match that of the Custom item or any other item in the current experiment HTML Items vs Custom Items An HTML file e g mydoc htm is a document In the same way that a doc file is meant to be viewed in Microsoft Word an htm file is meant to be viewed in a web browser like Internet Explorer Chrome or Firefox An htm file is also a simple text file which means you can open and edit it in any text editor such as the Windows Notepad When you open an htm file in a text editor you will see code that you don t see when viewing it in a web browser these are all the instructions that tell the web
141. naire In MediaLab experiments you can define as many conditions as you like with each having as many files as you like These files can be the same ones in different orders or they can be different files altogether That s all there is to this experiment MediaLab v2014 Close the experiment file by clicking OK Then close the Experiment Editor This will return you to the main MediaLab window Now run the experiment enter a subject ID but ask for Condition 2 this time After that Step 3 See How the Questionnaire Was Made From the main menu bar in MediaLab select Experiment Editor When the Experiment Editor opens select Open from the File Menu and open selfesteem que Here you ll see the items contained in the questionnaire file Here you can see the basic information about each item the ordinal position 64 the item name 56 and the question wording 53 or filename 4 Double click on any position number to see the item details Note how Scale Responses require the p parameter 6 telling MediaLab how many scale points the question requires Try using the context sensitive help here Place the cursor on any field e g the position field and pressing F1 Close the Details window 3 by clicking on the big checkmark in the lower right corner and then click OK to close the questionnaire and then close the Experiment Editor Step 4 Look at the Data Your datal 70 will be located in a data folder contained in the same direct
142. nditions within a single calculation Grab a pot of coffee and go through Excel s help on this for an hour or so and you ll get it To access the relevant help on constructing calculations and conditional statements press F1 in Excel Using the Answer Wizard or the Index look up terms like If And Or Logical Functions Functions Listed by Category When including experiment variables in the responses xis file you can include ANY variable from ANY questionnaire in your experiment everything goes into the responses xis file which is placed in your experiment folder Variable names used for experiment variables need to match the variable names used in the MediaLab data files This is important to remember for items that record multiple values For example let s say you have a multiple response question called MR1 that has five response options Normally there won t be a variable in your data file called MR1 Since there are five responses written they will be called MR1_01 MR1_02 MR1_03 and so forth This applies also to thought listing items and ranking items If in doubt you can always check one of your data files to see how the variable names are written MediaLab v2014 When creating conditional statements or calculations based on the value of experiment variables it will always be the value written to the final data file that MediaLab will enter in the value column of Responses xls a Essay content can not be accessed as
143. ng where a depression inventory might be administered When you re done go to the experiment s data folder In here you ll find a folder called reports Inside the reports folder is a file called 1 x s this will be different if you used another subject ID Open this file by double clicking on it First you ll see many of the responses you gave to the questionnaire Click on the tab at the bottom left that says sheet 2 Here you ll find a custom report for the session that displays your name age and self esteem score It presents a graphic that is based on your self esteem score and also displays a graph of the individual response times for each question This report is completely customizable and can be created automatically for each subject with any raw MediaLab v2014 or summary data you like and formatted in any way you like How is it all done Let s close the report file and go back to the experiment folder Open the file responses xIs this is the secret If you have a standard Excel file called responses xIs in your experiment folder then MediaLab knows you want to use some or all of these advanced functions The question now what do we put in this Excel file called responses xlIs Variable Value and Skipto Notice that there are three columns on the opening worksheet variable value and skipto The Variable Column In the variable column there are two types of variables experiment variables and calculated vari
144. nt to try that here is how you do it Type dxdiag from the Run command on the Windows Start menu You will get a complete diagnostic description of your system If you then click Save All Information and send the resulting file to us we ll take a look at it and see if we can see anything problematic You can also check for some obvious problems here yourself the display tab in particular may indicate you could benefit from a driver update or other action A Absolute vs Relative Paths 104 Advanced Features 99 Calculated Scores and Variables 101 Complex Skips 102 Session Report 102 Alternate Data Folder 9 83 Animation see Movie 47 Autostart Files 87 B BackGround exp 27 que 39 BackSound exp 28 que 40 BackVideo exp 28 que 41 ByQuestionnaire Data 70 ByVariablename Data 70 C CD ROM Experiments 9 Clear Data 75 84 Codes License 4 Colours 83 Command Line c Parameter 31 57 ComPort Data 107 Copying and Pasting in Editor 17 CSV Data Files 70 73 Custom Items 43 Creating 88 Data 76 D Data Access MDBfile 75 ByQuestionnaire 70 ByVariablename 70 Clear Data 75 84 CSV 70 73 Custom Items 76 O 1995 2014 Empirisoft Corporation Determining Random Order 74 Essay Responses 74 Excel 73 FAQ 72 Merging Files 73 Missing Values 75 Recoding 74 SAS 73 SAV 70 SPSS 70 73 Timestamps 74 TXT 70 Variable Names 76 Vertical Format 75 Write Data as Text 69 Write Re
145. nto the microphone SoundCheck should report the response time in milliseconds If you need to speak too loudly to set off the test then try moving the sensitivity slider toward the left If the test is set off too easily then try moving the sensitivity slider toward the right Try this until you find an RT sensitivity that works well for you When you are happy with the sensitivity click Save This will make the new sensitivity level available to MediaLab when you run a session with voice responses It is advisable to run a few test RTs on any machine before running a MediaLab session with voice responses for the first time Note Some users have reported that optimal performance for Voice RTs requires restarting MediaLab between sessions While we work on figuring out why we ll simply pass on this recommendation Web Tracker The HTML item type allows you to present HTML and other browser compatible files The WebTracker item extends this functionality by tracking a subject s behavior while browsing through a sequence of HTML or other browser compatible files It stores each link that the subject follows as well as the time at which the link was followed and how long the subject stayed there before continuing to the next link The item ends when the subject clicks the Continue button These data are all written to a separate spreadsheet file csv that will be named after the variable name you assigned to the WebTracker item and will be loca
146. ny duration you like before it resets to 0 Specify these three variables in the parameters field like so lt value location duration gt For example say you present an image item for 5 seconds and at its onset you want to send a signal of 255 to port 888 for 10ms To present it for 5 seconds you would use parameter value of d5 To add the TTL signal at its onset you would add d5 lt 255 888 10 gt Note that there is a TTL I O test utility in the Utilities folder You can use JOTest exe to test whether your external hardware can send and or receive TTL signals from any given port See also Serial Datal 10 width height optional You can specify the width and height of the essay and fill in the blank text boxes using the width and height parameters to allow for additional room for question wording or for background images html e g h150 w400 To determine values appropriate for your display select Showing Location Points under the main MediaLab Help menu You can also use the height and width parameters to specify the display size of images Note that if you size an image using the height and width parameters you need to also specify the top and left parameters 65 otherwise it will appear in the top left corner by default By default videos appear in their original size However you can set the exact size of the video using the width parameter The height will automatically be set in proportion to the width you speci
147. o bypass the MediaLab Experiment Editor completely or you can do some of the work in Access and some of the work in the MediaLab editor Some people for example like to load their files into Access for heavy copying and pasting jobs or to use the Access Spell Checker Key Concepts 20 Click here to find out more about exactly what the Experiment Files are and do in MediaLab Overview Window 2 Click here to see an example of an Experiment File and find out more about its basic features File Details Click on any of these links to find out more about specific features of the Experiment Files in MediaLab Condition 28 BackGroundl 21 Randomize Within Groups 29 Position 25 BackSoundI 28 Randomize Between GroupsT 30 File 267 BackVideo 28 Parameters 3 4 1 Key Concepts The experiment editor allows to you to create view and edit the details of your experimental conditions The experiment file you create using this editor is the first thing that MediaLab looks at when you go to run the experiment You specify here which questionnaires images videos sounds documents html files executables or PowerPoint shows you want to present in each condition and the order in which you want them presented When you run the experiment MediaLab will ask you which condition you want to run It will read your experiment file determine which files you have specified for that condition and then it will present those files to the subject in th
148. o know which of your materials and questions are assigned to each of your experimental conditions and the order in which they will presented You may have just a single condition with a single questionnaire or a complicated factorial design with many questionnaires and randomization Either way MediaLab is very flexible in terms of experimental design Once you have your design planned your questions in mind and your materials prepared MediaLab plays the simple role of executing your experiment and preparing your data for analysis To get MediaLab to do what you want you need to understand two new types of files The Experiment File The experiment file i e files with the exp extension deals with things on a very general level Here you simply specify which files are going to be presented in each of your conditions You basically tell MediaLab In condition 1 present file1 file2 file3 etc and in condition 2 present file1 file4 file5 etc These files can be Word documents PowerPoint shows HTML files movies sounds images executables and MediaLab Questionnaires To learn more about experiment files see the page about Key Concepts of MediaLab Experiment Files 20 The MediaLab Questionnaire This is where MediaLab becomes extremely flexible The questionnaire que is a file that can be presented just like any other in your experiment In the experiment file you identify the files to be presented in your various cond
149. o use this feature you should select the Write As Text 6 option for the variable since a numeric variable in SPSS will not be able to store a text response Sound File Plays a WAV or MP3 format sound file For WAV files larger sound files may take a few seconds or longer to load Note that 8 bit mono sound files will load and play much faster than will 16 bit stereo sounds In contrast MP3 audio files are much smaller in size and will start to play immediately Importantly MP3 sound files are compressed with virtually no loss in sound quality Sound files support the BackGroundl 3 BackSoundl 44 which will play simultaneously or BackVideol 4 fields Note about Sounds versus BackSounds For flexibility in playing sound files they can be presented as a Sound item or they can be presented as BackSounds to other items Note that Sound items end automatically when the next item appears even ifthey have not yet completed In contrast BackSounds continue until completion overlapping subsequent items or until a file in another BackSound field of a different item is encountered Thus Sounds and BackSound can be used strategically to accomplish different effects Note that if you need to stop a BackSound upon item completion then you can simply insert silence wav in the Backsound field for the subsequent item It is a short silent sound file that will cancel any currently playing BackSound Silence wav can be found in the Utilities fol
150. one is available at www empirisoft com company aspx DirectRT DirectIN and MediaLab are trademarks of Empirisoft Coporation Table of Contents Part I MediaLab Overview 1 COMU St A AAA DA AAA A AA ADA A Setaen s 1 SA A A A A A O 4 KEY CONCE E E S EE S E E E A Buta ey tune ave han E EA 6 Part II Main Program Window 8 RU E E E E E E E E E A AS 9 Navigatio Moai aa A A a aaa a a 10 Part III Experiment Editor 11 El A E E E N AE E E NA 12 EAEE ds 14 OPON ii A A AA A Ua pee a AAA a 15 WA OW Aia A a da E tueaaated 15 PONIA A Ad Et 16 lo LACKS A OS 17 Part IV Experiment exp Files 20 Ke y2COnCe pts a ib 20 OVERVIEW WING OW aara T a das 21 Conditio Mess NO 25 POSO A A 25 FIGE ta ao 26 BIG UA a ee 27 Back SOU dni 28 DAVID cise ooo dasa aa a a A a a aaa 28 Randomize Within GrouUPS wo ccccccceccceceueceuceeeeeueeeueeeseeeeeusceescuseaueeueeeuceuueeuceeaueueueuaeeueeuaess 29 Randomize Between Groups cccecccceccceceucccuceeeceeeeeueceueeeueesceeeeueeaueeceeeuceuueeuueeuueuaueuaeaueesuass 30 Para Meters minin a aa A Wied elad a E 31 Part V Questionnaire que Files 34 Key CONMCE DUS ob 34 ONE WII Wi a r a a E as 35 A 39 TN 40 BANIJE n A OAT EA EEE TAAA de dee NK 41 FIG E da 41 COB a aaa 42 NON 43 Item W OFdiING Filey da 53 O 1995 2014 Empirisoft Corporation Part VI Part VII Part VIII Part IX Part X Part XI MediaLab v2014 LD iaa 55 Na iia 56 Omit CONAN A aaa 57 PAM Sit A A A A vada anves
151. ory as your experiment From the Data menu in MediaLab select Launch Explorer Find the Sample1 folder and open the Data folder located inside In here you will see two folders Usually you will use the byvariablename data folderl7 Take a look inside and you ll see a number of files MediaLab has generated all of these files for you automatically The first one to look at is sample1 csv You can open this with Excel Try it note that all the variables that start with t are response times 69 If you ve got SPSS installed you can open sample1 sav 73 Or you can open the sps syntax file highlight everything in the file and run it This input file tells SPSS to read the data file sample1 txt also located in your data folder and defines all of the variables After running this input file in SPSS you can analyze it right away Try doing some frequencies or means The other file in the main data folder is called comment txt You can open this in any text editor This file contains the open ended responses 74 from the essay item called comment in the self esteem questionnaire MediaLab writes the data from essay questions to their own file since it would get out of hand to write these to a standard data file Step 5 Modify and Run the Experiment Now let s try to modify the experiment you just ran With Windows Explorer still open make a copy of the selfesteem que questionnaire file and rename it myquestionnaire que Then double click o
152. ost screens so that the same scale is applicable no matter what resolution you are running A left value of 400 and a top value 300 would be entered as 1400 t300 Note As of v2004 you can express ANY location and size parameters as a percentage of the screen E g w 3 h 25 would be a rectangle 30 percent of the screen s width and 25 percent of its height To use percentages simply use a value less than 1 and greater than 0 width optional By default videos play in their original size However you can set the exact size of the video using the width parameter The height will automatically be set in proportion to the width you specify For example if you specify w200 for a video that is normally 320x240 it will appear as 200x150 You can also use the following shortcuts rather than specifying an exact width e g w 1 w2 etc a none or wO Default Size w 1 Full Screen a W 2 Half Screen w 3 One Fourth Screen a w 4 One Sixteenth Screen wi Double Size w2 Half Size w10 and higher specified width 8 proportional height Note As of v2004 you can express ANY location and size parameters as a percentage of the screen E g w 3 h 25 would be a rectangle 30 percent of the screen s width and 25 percent of its height To use percentages simply use a value less than 1 and greater than 0 duration for timed items optional To display one of the files in the experiment file for a predetermined a
153. ou might want to use q09 instead Because the ByVariablename data files don t care about which questionnaire asks the questions the data for items with identical variable names will all be written to the same column even if they are asked in different questionnaires Thus the final data file lists all variables in alphabetical order of their item names regardless of their questionnaire file or order of presentation during an experiment session This results in an extremely easy way to analyze data from most experiments It is also especially useful when you want to include the same variable in different questionnaires for different experimental conditions CSV vs TXT vs SAV Files You will notice that MediaLab writes a txt file and a csv file to each folder The txt file is intended to be read into SPSS which has no practical limit on cases or variables The accompanying sps syntax file that is generated will read this txt file The csv file is intended to be read in by pretty much any spread sheet application such as Excel Many people prefer to use Excel method because it s simpler but note that Excel is limited to reading in the first 255 variables from your csv file unless you are using Excel 2007 or later Notice that there is also an sav file located in the ByVariablename folder This is a native SPSS data file that can be opened directly in the Data Editor Window of SPSS You need to be careful with the sav files because they are ve
154. p gt Show Location Points for help with sizing on your system For example w 7 would make the scale span 70 of the screen width Scales will be centered in this space With both horizontal and vertical scale formats you can specify how far down the buttons appear by using the top parameterl 60 This can help to create more space for extra question wording Note that if you don t see your scale you might have moved it down too far i e try a smaller top value To force a subject to answer with a correct response you can enter the item s variable name in Skip to field for any incorrect answers For example if a question s variable name is q1 then simply enter q1 in the Skip to field for any response options that are wrong If one of these options is selected the subject will be prompted to try again Response times 6 will reflect the time of the first correct answer Finally you may want a subject to specify their answer if for example you give the an Other option Just include lt specify gt in the text label of the response option This will not be displayed to the subject but will cause MediaLab to prompt subjects to entera text response if they choose this option For example if you wanted the seventh option to be other and you wanted subjects to specify what other means then enter other lt specify gt for the text label The actual text response will be written to the data file instead of response number If you choose t
155. parameter m ck will offer three free blanks preceeded by m and followed by ck Fixing characters in this way allows subjects to offer partial responses such as in a word completion task You can also combine the mask and rangel 6 parameters For example the parameters M r100000000 999999999 could be used to prompt the subject for a valid nine digit social security number number of scale points 1 12 For scale responses multiple responses thought ratings and on line rating items you need to specify the number of scale points you would like MediaLab to display When you enter this parameter MediaLab will then allow you to enter the labels for the number of points you specify You can have from 1 to 12 points For example to specify a 5 point scale you would use p5 Note that when MediaLab runs your experiment the number keys 1 9 will work only for a scale of up to 9 points However MediaLab will also take input from the function keys F1 to F12 so that you can conveniently collect data from a 12 point scale and still assess reaction time This does not apply to on line rating items because input is taken through the arrow keys or joystick onset of question wording optional For items that take the onset parameter you can delay the appearance of the question wording for a specified number of milliseconds For example a 7pt scale response with the parameters p7 0750 will reveal the options immediately but th
156. posing a Time Limit When this item occurs we shut the previous QuickStyle off by entering a QuickStyle parameter of off An alternative would be to apply a different QuickStyle file Using the Soff value returns the colours and fonts to the default settings in your preferences file We also add the duration parameter 6 here to impose a time limit on the question In this case you will have up to 5 seconds to respond Try letting the time pass and see what happens Adding Other Media It s easy to add sound images and video to your questionnaire items using the Back fields In this case we add an image in the Background 34 field and a sound file in the Backsoundl 44 field In this case we have entered parameters for the Background image immediately after the filename this is always optional This will locate the image with a left value of 300 and a top value of 100 Adding a Specify Response In some case you may want to offer an Other response If you add lt specify gt to any response label then MediaLab will prompt subjects to specify their answer if they choose this button Try it When the item appears select the Other response and see what happens If a subject specifies an answer like this then the text response is written to the data file instead of the button they pressed MediaLab v2014 Back to Sam plesl 7 QuickInfo The Preferences menu in the main MediaLab window provides a way to edit and save defau
157. puter you can also run an experiment from another computer To do this again you must map the drive of MediaLab v2014 the other computer which contains the experiment see above Once you have done this you can run the experiment as if it were located locally From the Run menu choose Select and Run an Experiment or Select and Run a Single Questionnaire and browse to the experiment located on the mapped drive e g h experiment1 myexperiment exp This way multiple computers can access the same experiment froma single computer As with writing data to an alternate data folder 8 amp see above it is recommended that you specify a unique machine code in PreferencesI 84 because all the data from all machines will be writing to the data folder on this single computer This option may not be suitable for experiments that require a lot of bandwidth e g those that use a lot of video and sound or for experiments using many computers on a slow network Running Experiments From Another Program Shortcut or Batch File In some cases you may want to start an experimental session from another program or shortcut without any of the usual MediaLab startup screens You can begin a MediaLab session from within a Visual Basic application or program with VBA support by using a shell command as follows Shell c medialab medialab exe c medialab samples samplel samplel exp 15 1 If you specify the subject and condition IDs like this i e 15 1 in
158. r lt td gt lt tr gt lt tr gt lt td gt Name lt td gt lt td gt lt input name name gt lt td gt lt tr gt lt tr gt lt td gt Age lt td gt lt td gt lt input name age gt lt td gt lt tr gt lt tr gt lt td gt Sex lt td gt lt td gt lt input name sex gt lt td gt lt tr gt lt tr gt lt td gt Ethnicity lt td gt lt td gt lt input name ethnicity gt lt td gt lt tr gt lt tr gt lt td gt Marital Status lt td gt lt td gt lt input name marital gt lt td gt lt tr gt lt tr gt lt td gt lt br gt lt input type submit value Continue gt lt td gt lt tr gt lt table gt lt form gt How it looks in a browser MediaLab v2014 What is your Name Age SS Sex NAAA Ethnicity TE Marital Status hs Continue To see this sample is action go to C MediaLab Samples Sample5 custom items myTextBox4 dummy variables See Also Custom Items Overview 88 Repeating Custom Items 9f Variable Referencel 9 Samples eh 93 Variable Reference Variable Reference The following variables can be placed in the HTML of any custom item MediaLab will substitute the appropriate values in the HTML code before it is displayed This is a convenient way to substitute information from the current MediaLab item without having to alter the HTML code Such substitutions could include color and font information response options question wording background images parameters an
159. re All other files will be presented in their assigned positions as long as their RWG value is either O or none You can independently randomize another group of items by assigning them all a 2 another group with 3s and so forth Example In your questionnaire you want to present 1 an instruction screen 2 five scale response items randomly ordered 3 three fill in the blank items randomly ordered and 4 a final Word document Assign an RWG value of 0 or none to the instruction screen and Word document to keep them where they are a 1 to the five scale response items and 2 to the three fill in the blank items That s it To randomize the order that groups of items are presented e g whether the scale items or the fill in the blank items are presented first see Randomize Between Groups 6 Note For ease of analysis variables will be written to the data file in the order the occur in the questionnaire not in the randomized order in which they are presented 5 16 Randomize Between Groups QuickInfo All items sharing the same RBG value define a group to be kept together If multiple groups are defined then MediaLab will present the groups of items in a random order Value Any positive integer value Purpose You may wish to randomly order and present entire groups of items in your questionnaire e g randomizing whether demographic or personality questions come first in a questionnaire To do this assign the same RBG va
160. re automatically updated by MediaLab when the data become available What happens next is the really fun part Excel automatically updates all of your calculated variables taking into account the current values of your experiment variables Let s look at the example of rse positive scored Double click the mouse on the value column for this calculated variable You ll see that this cell actually contains the formula AVERAGE B4 B5 B7 B9 B10 This is an Excel calculation formula We re telling Excel that we want the value here to equal the average of the cells listed in parentheses If you look at what s in those cells you ll see that it s the subject s responses to rsel rse2 rse4 rse6 and rse7 These happen to be the positively scored self esteem items such as I feel that I have a number of good qualities Now let s look at rse negative scored You ll see that this cell contains 7 AVERAGE B6 B8 B11 B12 B13 Here we re averaging the reverse scored items e g I am inclined to feel that I ama failure and then subtracting that value from 7 to recode it such that higher numbers reflect higher self esteem Finally look at rse AVERAGE B27 B28 We see that the final calculated self esteem score is an average of the two sub scores above Now we have a calculated variable rse that is the subject s overall self esteem score 10 1 Calculated Scores Presenting Calculated Scores in MediaLab Now that
161. remaining lines tell MediaLab how to map incoming signals to response keys On each line you can list a pair where the first value is the signal sent to the serial port i e 1 255 and the second value is the response it should map on to i e 1 to 12 In the example above if MediaLab detects a 1 coming through the serial port it will react as though the 1 or Fi key had just been pressed See the Serial Datal 10 section for more information 5 11 Name QuickInfo Identifies the item name and provides a variable name for the data file Values Any string up to 60 characters Keep in mind though that some statistical packages and spreadsheet applications may still have difficulty working with longer variable names Avoid spaces special characters and variable names that start with a number Be sure to view and analyze some practice data before going too crazy with this feature Purpose This field is the variable name A unique name is required for every item in the questionnaire This is the name that will be written to the SPSS and SAS input files For items that collect multiple responses numbers will be appended to the name Item names also allow for skip patterns 66 and thought ratings 5 A and for the insertion of subjects responses into later question wordings 74 Hints Most data analysis programs react negatively to a few things that can be avoided here For example Avoid variable names that begin with a number
162. ress enter to edit the field directly All forms have a button with a check mark like this Y This button closes whatever editor you are currently in You will always be given the option to save any changes that you ve made Details Editor In the details editor you will notice four buttons with arrows e The first key z will take you to the details of the first file in your experiment The second key i you to the file immediately preceding the one you are currently editing v The third key E you to the file immediately after the one you are currently editing bd and the fourth key takes you to the last file in your experiment 4 3 4 4 Condition QuickInfo Identifies which files are presented together in an experimental session Values Any text Usually numbers but words are allowed For more than 9 conditions you can label the first 9 conditions using two digits e g 01 02 03 etc to preserve numeric alphabetic consistency Purpose When you run a MediaLab session you will be asked for two things 1 a Subject ID for writing to the data file and 2 the Condition you want to run MediaLab will then read your experiment file and look for all the files that belong to the condition you specify Therefore in the experiment editor you need to identify which conditions receive which files In your experiment file you can create as many conditions as you like Simply create a unique identifier
163. rom the MediaLab Session In the case of our custom example above try this modification and save it as myTextBox3 htm lt form method post gt lt ml wording gt lt input name lt ml varname gt gt lt input type submit value Continue gt lt form gt Create three Custom items in your questionnaire and assign them variable names such as ques1 ques2 and ques3 For each enter the same custom item file myTextBox3 htm for the file name As you do this create a different question wording for each one e g What is your favorite food What is your favorite animal What is your favorite movie Now run the questionnaire and see what happens You should find that each time you request it MediaLab will display it with the appropriate wording from the questionnaire and will save the data from the item using the appropriate variable name MediaLab v2014 See Also Custom Items Overviewl8 amp Single Vs Multiple Variables 9A Variable Reference 9h Samples 9A 9 2 Single Vs Multiple Variables Single vs Multiple Variables The previous example item 8 collects a single response The execution of this method is the easiest and is applicable when you have a single value being collected with your custom item In your MediaLab questionnaire you name your custom item var01 and in your HTML form you likewise name your posted variable var01 When the value for var01 is posted MediaLab will intercept it and save it as the valu
164. rovided in the Options menu of the MediaLab Experiment Editor Commands Use Full Path Names When selecting files by double clicking in a cell this option specifies that the full path be included e g c experiments exp1 images image1 bmp See Specifying File Paths i for details Use Relative Paths When selecting files by double clicking in a cell this option specifies that the path be specified relative to the experiment exp file e g images image1 bmp See Specifying File Paths 104 for details Question Wording Cells Expand All Shows the complete contents of all question wording cells in the overview window Collapse All Shows only the first line of each question wording cell Clicking on any question wording cell will automatically cause it to expand Choose Columns to View Print Allows you to hide or show columns in the overview window This feature is especially handy if you wanted to print only a select number of columns from the overview window Editor Font Allows you to choose an alternate font for editing text within the editor Can be useful for international font requirements You may also need to choose a Character Set for your language from the main MediaLab Preferences 891 menu 3 4 Window QuickInfo The following describes the functions provided in the Windows menu of the MediaLab Experiment Editor Commands New Window Equivalent to selecting Open from the File menu MediaLab v201
165. ry sensitive to changes in the structure of your experiment If you make changes to your study it s usually best to delete or move the old sav file and allow MediaLab to generate a fresh one for the revised experiment Note that versions of SPSS prior to version 12 only allow variable names of up to 8 characters more recent versions allow for up to up to 64 bytes in length This typically means a maximum of 64 characters in single byte languages such as English French and German and a maximum of 32 characters in double byte languages such as Japanese Chinese and Korean If you have any names longer than the limit allowed with your version of SPSS e g with suffixes added by MediaLab then they will be renamed VAR0001 VAROOO2 etc In order to find out which variables had to be renamed you can double click on them in SPSS MediaLab saves the original variable name as the variable label MediaLab v2014 Advanced Hint Some people strongly prefer using the csv data format but get stuck when they have more than 255 variables because they do not have Excel v2007 or later If you try opening your csv file in Excel and get the file not loaded completely message you can deal with this by importing the file directly into SPSS To do so first rename the file from csv to txt Then in SPSS you can select File gt New gt Data File gt Open Files of type gt Tab delimited dat txt File name lt select your file gt Pr
166. s Although it can get more complicated this is the gist of how most questions are asked when you are surfing the internet For more information regarding HTML forms see www w3schools com html html_forms asp How it Works MediaLab Intercepts If you present a Custom item rather than an HTML item then MediaLab will monitor the posting of any form data If it finds any data being submitted where the variable name matches the name of any item in any questionnaire file in your MediaLab experiment then that intercepted value will be written to your standard data files under that name That s all there is to it Example What is the mysterious code that goes between the lt form gt tags This item below presents a text box in which subjects can enter a response When they click Continue MediaLab will check to see if any variables in the experiment are called textBox1 If so the response will be saved to the data files under that name We can handle that easily by assigning the variable name textBox1 to the Custom item itself when we list it in the questionnaire lt form method post gt What is your answer lt input name textbox1 gt lt input type submit value Continue gt lt form gt How it looks in a browser MediaLab v2014 What is your answer Continue Try It To create your first custom item you can copy the code above everything from lt form gt to lt form gt into a blank text file e g vi
167. s can select a response option by either using the number key that corresponds to the alternative 1 through 9 or you can have them use the function keys F1 through F12 in order to respond when 10 or more alternatives are presented Scale responses require the points parameter 6 to indicate how many scale points to use e g p5 for a five point scale Scale responses support the Beck Ground A BackSoundl 40 or BackVideol 4 fields The selected response also become available for insertion within the question wording of subsequent items 76 By default scale responses offer a single line for the text labels In cases where you need more space because of long labels you can use the spacing parameter 62 This allows you to create more space for labels with lots of text or if you re using an html file for your labels For example if you want to double space your response options to create more space use the parameter s2 or s3 to triple space or s1 5 to add a half space and so on You can enter any value from 1 to 5 and decimals are ok This will produce evenly spaced response options with as many extra lines per item as you need Importantly you can do this on an item by item basis the default of course is single space if you don t specify the space parameter By default scale responses are presented vertically They can be presented using a horizontal format by using the width parameterl64 to specify the width of the scale see Hel
168. s replaced the old questionnaire Let s add another file to Condition 1 in addition to your questionnaire In the first available row of your experiment file and enter a value of 1 in the Condition 25 field Enter a value of 2 in the Position field Double click on the File Namel4A field and select an image file on your hard drive and jpg bmp or gif file To see the types of files you can add here click Files of Type when the dialog box opens If you have Internet Explorer 4 or later installed you could also enter a web address e g www empirisoft com here ora local HTML file After selecting a file click Sort then Save and OK That s it Close the Editor and return to the main MediaLab window Choose Select and Run Experimentl and run Sample1 Condition 1 again Note that if you have made changes that will affect your data files you ll want to click the Clear Data button 73 to delete the old data files and start fresh after backing them up if there are data you want to save That s the gist of MediaLab Of course experiments can get much more elaborate than this but the basic idea is always the same The experiment file defines the files that will be presented in each condition These files can be pretty much anything including MediaLab Questionnaire files which allow you to ask questions For more detailed help be sure to check out the manual MediaLabManual pdf contained in the MediaLab Help folder and to use the OnLine Help by pre
169. schools com html html_forms asp Text Fields Text fields are used when you want the user to type letters numbers etc in a form lt form gt First name lt input type text name firstname gt lt br gt Last name lt input type text name lastname gt lt form gt How it looks in a browser First name Last name Note that the form itself is not visible Also note that in most browsers the width of the text field is 20 characters by default Radio Buttons Radio Buttons are used when you want the user to select one of a limited number of choices lt form gt lt input type radio name sex value male gt Male lt br gt lt input type radio name sex value female gt Female lt form gt MediaLab v2014 How it looks in a browser CO Male C Female Note that only one option can be chosen Checkboxes Checkboxes are used when you want the user to select one or more options of a limited number of choices lt form gt lt input type checkbox name bike gt I have a bike lt br gt lt input type checkbox name car gt I have a car lt form gt How it looks in a browser C Ihave a bike C Ihave a car The Submit Button When the user clicks on the Submit button the content of the form is sent to another file The form s action attribute defines the name of the file to send the content to The file defined in the action attribute usually does something with the receiv
170. sing the optional top and left parameters 6d You can specify the size of the video using the width parameterl 63 the height will automatically be set in proportion Movies can also be shown simultaneous with most other items types by specifying a video file in the Backvideol 4A field Multiple Response The check all that apply multiple response format is the standard format to use when you want to offer closed ended response alternatives AND allow subjects to select one or more of the response alternatives Use from 1 to 12 response options and provide a text label for each Subjects can select and deselect multiple response options by hitting the appropriate key or clicking the appropriate button with the mouse You can also have them use the function keys Fi through F12 in order to respond when 10 or more alternatives are presented MediaLab will create a unique variable for each option and record whether or not each item was selected 1 or not 0 MediaLab v2014 Multiple response items require the p parameter 6 to indicate how many response options to use e g p5 for five options You can optionally add a range parameter 62 to specify a minimum and or maximum number of responses to take For example p5 r1 3 would require that the subject choose at least 1 and no more than 3 of the 5 options To require a single response you could specify r1 1 Multiple response items support the BackGroundl 39 odia or BackVideo 4 A fields
171. sing this method Inserting Copied Lines Records 1 Note that pasting overwrites the cells in the current row Therefore to insert the copied line s without affecting the other items in the file go down to the first blank line and then select Paste Ctrl V To move it to the desired location simply assign it a position number and then click Sort 3 You can also copy entire records from one file and insert them into another using this method Filling Down amp Filling Right Sometimes you may want to copy one cell over and over to a series of cells below it or to its right An example would be that you want to copy the same parameter value or scale point labels to 20 sequential items without having to retype it each time With the FillDown function this is easy e To copy a cell to a series of cells below it highlight the block of cells including the one you want to copy and then select FillDown Ctrl D This will copy the top cell to all the cells selected below e To copy a cell to a series of cells to its right highlight the block of cells including the one you want to copy and then select Fil Right Ctrl R This will copy the top cell to all the cells selected below e Note that the filling functions only operate in the main overview spreadsheet and not in Details 361 mode Double Clicking Functions If you double click on the Position Name or Condition Experiment files only columns this will immediately take you
172. so specify the number of scale points parameter the points parameterl 61 Thought rating items support all of the same optional parameters as Scale Responses above as well as the BackGrounal 39 BackSoundl 40 or BackVideol4A fields You can also include lt specify gt in the text label of any response option This will not be displayed to the subject but will cause MediaLab to prompt subjects to enter a text response This is handy in cases where you want to provide an alternative such as other For example ilf you wanted the seventh option to be other and you wanted subjects to specify what other means then enter other lt specify gt for the text label of the response choice The actual text response will be written to the data file instead of whether or not the item was selected If you choose to use this feature you should select the Write As Text 6 option for the variable since a numeric variable in SPSS will not be able to store a text response Voice Response MediaLab allows you to record voice responses and optionally measure the reaction time ofthose responses To save a voice response as a sound file simply enter a name in the Question Wording File Name field of the Voice Response item It will automatically be saved by that name in a Voice subfolder within the main Data folder If you specify none then no sound file will be saved If you check Write Reaction Timel6 then you will get the latency of the response in milliseconds
173. ssing F1 at any time More samples are contained in the Samples folder Sample 2 Scale Responses and an Introduction to Parameters C MediaLab Samples Sample2 zip requires unzipping This sample demonstrates what you can do with scale responses It starts with the most basic application and ends with a relatively advanced example You will need Microsoft s Internet Explorer Version 4 or later installed to view the HTML files that are used in this sample Click Continue or press the spacebar to begin Press Ctrl Alt Rightl 14 to exit the sample at any time Standard Scale Item 5 The first scale response you ll see is the standard format which uses just the point p parameter 6 to indicate the number of scale points see the Parameters field This tells MediaLab how many scale points you want In this case it s 6 Click Continue or press the space bar to see the item When the item appears you can click Go Back 4 to see this screen again or enter a response to continue Inserting Prior Responses in Question Wording and Skipping With scale items and fill in the blank items you can enter subject s responses in later question wordings 7 For example what was the response you just gave to the last question Whatever it was it should show up in the next item The question wording specifies lt rse9 gt That tells MediaLab to insert the subject s response to the item with variable name rse9 into the question wording of this item
174. t image editing programs will allow you to convert images to 256 colors without a noticeable degradation in quality If you do see a noticeable difference try another image editor e g IrfanView is very good and can be downloaded from http www irfanview com All MediaLab images e g the blue screen the MediaLab rats the opening splash screen etc are 256 color images The reason the display should be set to thousands or millions of colors is so that multiple 256 color images can be displayed simultaneously Inquisit To embed an Inquisit session within your questionnaire you must have Inquisit build 1 25 except build 1 32 or later installed and operational see www millisecond com Simply select the Inquisit item type and enter the name of the Inquisit experiment file in the File field MediaLab will pass the current subject values to Inquisit which will run the session and then pass control back to MediaLab when it s finished Instructions For many instructions you may not want to go to the effort of creating a Word or HTML document In many cases simple text will do it In such cases choose the Instructions item and provide the text you want displayed in the Question Wording File Name field Instructions items have a number of options to control their appearance You can control the positioning of instruction text using the top and left parameters 6 You can also embed images html sound and video in an instruction item by us
175. t of items Advanced Hints Combining the skip function with RWG Randomize Within Groups T6 you can achieve extra randomization functionality For example to randomly present 5 of 10 items give all 10 items the same RWG value e g 1 This will randomize their order Then embed a blank instruction item with a delay of 1 second after the fifth item and give it a skip value to go the item following the tenth randomized item This will result in the five of the ten items being presented which were randomly ordered after which MediaLab will automatically skip the remaining 5 unpresented items and proceed with the rest of the questionnaire Skipping a Fixed Num ber of Items As an alternative to explicitly naming the variable you want to skip to you can simply enter 1 2 3 n etc MediaLab will automatically skip that many items without needing to know the name of a Skip to variable it will simply resume wherever it ends up This is especially nice when the item being skipped to is randomly determined and so you do not actually know the variable name ahead of time Skipping on Multiple Response Items You can include Skip to values with multiple response items but they work if and only if the subject chooses a single response To be super safe you can combine this with the r1 1 parameter in order to disallow multiple options from being selected For example using p5 r1 1 in the Parameter s field for a 5 item multiple response it
176. t shows do not require any parameters Hint If you are new to PowerPoint follow these steps to create your first slide show Open PowerPoint and select File gt New from the main menu Choose the Presentations file tab and select a template the Business Plan Standard is very cool a Click on the text and replace it with whatever you like e g Welcome to the experiment Use the Page Down key to advance to the next slide and edit it as well a Add new slides with the Insert gt New Slide command Delete slides with the Edit gt Delete Slide command When you re happy with the show select File gt Save As from the main menu In the window that appears click on the Save As Type box and select PowerPoint Show pps Enter a name for the file Drop it into your questionnaire or experiment file You re done Hint Open PowerPoint and go to Tools gt Options gt View gt SlideShow and click off all three options This will eliminate the right clicking popup issue as well as eliminate the end of slide show screen in case you re getting that as well Ranking With the ranking item you can give subjects up 12 items to rank in any order they choose The items will appear as labels that subjects will be able to drag and drop into a special ranking area using the mouse To design your ranking item first enter a points parameter 6f to indicate how many items you want to have subjects rank For example to have 6 items ranked
177. te forums is provided for you to post your MediaLab experiments questionnaires and other MediaLab related files for others to play with Feel free to post away Also feel free to comment on any posts if you happen to try them sort of an informal peer review process We may edit posts when we deem it necessary Please zip your files and folders whenever possible Note that you will need to register to download files but registering is quick easy and free 7 1 Continue to Samples 7A Samples Sample 1 Samplei exp text from Tutorial on the MediaLab Help menu So I ve installed MediaLab Now what do I do Good question This brief tutorial about 15 minutes will walk you through the basics of MediaLab After you ve run through this short tutorial you will likely be able to design and execute a short experiment of your own This on line tutorial can be run at any time by clicking Help gt On line Tutorial from the main menu You might find it helpful to print out this tutorial so you will be unobstructed as you go through the steps of running and editing the sample experiment This purpose of this short tutorial is to give you the gist of how MediaLab works After running through it you may wish to check out the additional sample experiments and questionnaires located in the Samples folder of the MediaLab program folder usually C MediaLab Samples For more detailed help select Help gt MediaLab Help from the main menu of MediaLab or
178. te permission If you do not see a Security tab then try Step 2 Step 2 Open Folder Options in the Windows Control Panel On the View tab make sure Use simple file sharing is not checked It should be one of the last options With that unchecked you should now get a security tab when checking the properties of folders Try Step 1 again that should do it Ea Security To help control unauthorized distribution and use of MediaLab it has been secured with ATX software protection MediaLab will not run on any machine until this security has been disabled To disable the security follow these steps a Installand run MediaLab You will receive a message that the current workstation requires authorization to use the software and a code number will be displayed a E mail the code to sales empirisoft com If you are an authorized user you will receive a translation of this code which will be a registration number unique for the machine on which you have installed MediaLab usually the same day Then re start MediaLab and enter the six digit code provided to you MediaLab should now be fully functional Important ATX codes are unique to every machine Be sure to get authorization for each machine that will be using the software If you have any difficulty at all with this procedure please contact us for assistance via sales empirisoft com Trial users may request a code that will enable MediaLab to run for 21 days Alterna
179. ted in the experiment s data folder Word and WordPerfect Documents Note Some systems have a hard time displaying Word documents If you have any trouble simply save your documents in Word as HTML using Save As and then present them as HTML items instead Present nicely formatted text by inserting a Word or WordPerfect document Since MediaLab presents these documents exactly as they appear when you see them in Word or WordPerfect you can exploit all of the formatting power available in these applications Basically however it looks in Word or WordPerfect is how it s going to look in MediaLab You can even embed images or other objects in your document and they will appear in MediaLab Word and WordPerfect documents support BackSoundl 40 or BackVideol 47 fields Each application must be installed on the system in order to take advantage of this functionality EN Some important considerations for using Word and WordPerfect documents with MediaLab Each screen you want to show must be a separate Word WordPerfect document Documents that will not fit on one screen can be broken up saved as separate files and presented sequentially If you need all of your document presented in one long sequential file that users can scroll through consider saving your file as HTML and presenting it as an HTML item see above Document margins and text size will depend on your display resolution Wider documents can be viewed when your monitor disp
180. the data input file See Data 70 for more details For item types like Instruction items that do not gather input data the response ok is written to the data file to confirm that the item was presented i e as opposed to being skipped If this you do not to write data from these items for whatever reason e g practice trials simply uncheck the Write to Data File field for that item 5 20 Write Data as Text QuickInfo When the Write as Text field is checked in the Details menu see below MediaLab will write the data to the data file with quotes surrounding it It will also indicate in the SPSS input file that the variable format is text otherwise value formats are recorded as numeric Missing values for items with the Write as Text field checked will also be treated as text format otherwise missing data values will be recorded as numeric format Typically this option is checked for item types like essayl 44 recall listl 44 and thought listing 5 whose data are primarily text but it can be used with other item types as well Also see the Data 7d section of the manual for more details IV Write data Allow GoBack Wording File Position Pij Reaction time V Write as Text none Type Essay y Variable Name none Background none Backsound none Backvideo none Randomize W none Randomize B none Parameter s none File Name none Omit none 5 21 Write Reaction Time QuickInfo When the Reaction Time fie
181. tiple Style Files MediaLab automatically loads the default preferences file If you want load a different preferences file you can select Load Other Preferences File from the Preferences menu You can create edit and save as many Preference files as you like Quickstyle mlq files are just like Preference files mlp except that they contain ONLY font and color information You can create many quickstyle files with various foreground and background color combinations as well as font options The benefit of quickstyle files is that you can instruct MediaLab to apply a different quickstyle file at any time during the experiment or in the middle of a questionnaire In the parameter field of any experiment or questionnaire item you can name a quick style file preceded by a which will cause MediaLab to switch to that style You are no longer limited to using a single set of color and font options How QuickStyles work To create a quickstyle mlq file select QuickStyles from the Preferences menu You can then select a configuration of fonts and colors Select SaveAs and save the quickstyle file with a name of your choosing e g mystyle1 mlq You can either save it in the MediaLab Styles folder so that all experiments can use it or you can save it to your experiment folder to make it available only to your current experiment Then in your questionnaire or experiment files enter the name of the style file preceded by a in the Paramet
182. tive Solution for Verifying Licenses Tired of entering all those authorization codes If you belong to a school that has purchased a departmental site license then we can hard code your department s IP prefix into MediaLab so that ANY machine starting with that prefix e g 123 456 789 will start up right away if the code 99999 is entered Multiple patterns can be accommodated Ask sales empirisoft com for details Reinstalling MediaLab If you are upgrading to a new version you will be asked to uninstall the existing version Experiments data folders preferences and licenses will not be affected by uninstalling Of course we recommend backing up experiment data and any existing MediaLab files e g any que and exp files before making any changes to your system System Settings The following are suggestions for your general system set up True colors To allow for the full range of colors usable by MediaLab it is recommended that you use 16 24 or 32 bit color Some older systems are set by default to 8 bit which provides for only 256 colors colors or color ranges may appear as dots patterns or solid regions To change these settings open the Display properties in your computer s Control Panel and select Settings Select the highest color range possible 24 and 32 bit color ranges are both capable of displaying close to the full range of colors detectable by the human eye Show file extensions MediaLab frequently makes
183. tructs MediaLab to use a white background This way the HTML files will blend in End of Scale Item Sam ple That s it This sample represent much of what you can do with Scale Items Of course everything you ve seen here is optional aside from the use of the Points p parameter telling MediaLab how many scale points you need e g as in the first question rse1 Hopefully if you need more options than that you ve seen here how to accomplish what you need If you have any questions feel free to contact us at support empirisoft com Adding Response Options amp Modifying Button Labels The next item is pretty much the same except that we ve changed the Point parameter to 9 providing for 9 response options We ve also changed the button labels 581 to include negative values Since there are no negative keys on the keyboard you would need to label your keyboard appropriately e g with 1 or F1 corresponding to 4 2 or F2 as 3 and so on Click Continue or press the space bar to see the item Horizontal Response Scale The next scale item is the same as the first except we now add the width parameter 63 This tells MediaLab we want a horizontal scale and specifies that it should be 500 units wide See Show Location Points in the Help menu for the sizing scale that is used with your display MediaLab tries its best to use a resolution independent display Click Continue or press the space bar to see the item More Room for Quest
184. ts MediaLab 6 Keys to Skip Items 10 L Labels 55 License Codes 4 Licensing IP 4 Load Other Preferences File 84 Machine Code 84 Mask m Parameter 31 57 MediaLab Data 70 Experiment Editor 11 Experiment Files 20 Main Program Window 8 Overview 1 6 Preferences 82 Questionnaire Files 34 Trouble Shooting 109 MediaLab Sample Experiments 76 Merging Data Files 73 Message Text Modifying 86 Missing Values 75 Modify Message Text 86 Movie BackVideo exp 28 Backvideo que 41 Experiment File 26 Parameters exp 31 Parameters que 57 Questionnaire Item 47 Multiple Choice see Scale Response 50 Multiple Response 47 1995 2014 Empirisoft Corporation Multiple Response Item Parameters 57 Mute MediaLab Sounds 84 N Name 56 Navigation 10 GoBack 42 Secret Keys 10 Network Drives 9 Number of Thoughts n 61 Number of Thoughts n Parameter 31 57 O Omit Conditions 57 On Line Ratings 48 Parameters 57 Onset o Parameter 31 57 Open Ended Responses Essay 44 Fill in the Blank 44 Options Experiment Editor 15 Options MediaLab 82 Overview Window Experiment Editor 21 Questionnairre Editor 35 Overview MediaLab 6 P Parameters exp 31 Parameters que 57 Command Line Arguments c 59 Duration d 60 Height h 63 Key k 60 Left 60 Mask m 61 Number of Points p 61 Number of Thoughts n 61 Onset of Wording o 61 Password x 61 Quickstyle 59 Range r 62 Spacing s 62 Target Quest
185. ts that the screen cursor appear within the specified input area In this example we are asking that the cursor automatically appear within the textbox1 field so that the users does not need to click on it to start typing To try the example above see C MediaLab Samples Sample5 custom items myTextBox2 Advanced Hint Continuing without a Continue Button MediaLab will not display the standard Continue button when a custom item is used Instead it will wait until some data is posted via a submit button In some cases though you may not want this to happen automatically An alternative is to use the password parameter 6 In this case the password can be a variable name e g xvarname If you do this MediaLab will not proceed to the next item unless the password variable is included in the post This is especially handy if you want to make a multi page custom item with multiple postings See Also Repeating Custom Items 9h 9 1 Single Vs Multiple Variables 9 Variable Reference 9 Samples 7A Repeating Custom Items A powerful and time saving feature of custom items is the capability to use them over and over again without having to modify them If you create a special scale response item with a slider to use in your 50 item questionnaire you do not want to make 50 versions of it each with different question wording and response options Well maybe you do If so no need to read any further But if you ike the idea of 1 file
186. tton with a text label of skip this question then you could type Skip this question t 7 1 7 in the Text Label field for that response option That would make the button appear 70 of the way across and 70 of the way down the screen If you want to adjust the size of the button you can add height and width parameters 6 to the Text Label field for that response option In the example above if you wanted to resize the button as well as relocating it you could type Skip this question t 7 1 7 in the Text Label field for that response option This would produce the same result as above except the label would be 20 of the screen width Finally if you want to place the text label within the button itself then simply put the text label in the Label field the parameters in the Text Label field for that response option like this Label Text Label ip to 1 skip th t 7 1 7 w 2 none The result will be skip this question MediaLab v2014 Inserting Variables in Response Options You can also insert prior responses 7 from fill in the blank items scale responses multiple responses and any response xls variables you have calculated i into the response options of any subsequent questionnaire item that allows response options Simply type the item name 5 with a set of lt gt like this lt item_name gt For example if you have items named friend1 and friend2 you could have whatever was recorded for those items appear in t
187. u can use a relative path for ANY file located anywhere within your main experiment folder The advantage of placing the file in the experiment directory or a subfolder is that the experiment folder can then be moved to a different place and you won t have to worry about checking path names e g c d 1 etc You could copy your experiment folder to any location on any drive and all of the relative paths would still be valid Hint You can specify relative or absolute file paths to be the default when selecting files in the Experiment Editor You can set your preferred default in the Options menul 13 It is recommended to set this option to Use Relative Paths This is because the only time an absolute path is necessary is when the desired file is not located somewhere within the experiment folder However even if you are using relative paths the editor will enter an absolute path if this is the case 11 2 Sizing Images and Movies MediaLab tries to use a resolution independent scale so that your experiments will look the same no matter what resolution of the computer on which you run them Some differences can not be avoided however To see what the scale is on your particular system choose Show Location Points from the Help menu in MediaLab To see how the resolution independence works take a look at the scale now Then resize the MediaLab window and try it again You should notice that the scale doesn t change Try setting a di
188. uestion wordings Create multiple style configurations 84 e g colors and fonts for use within the same experiment or questionnaire Can t find what you need Design your own custom items 88 using HTML forms Example of Multi Media Capability Present graphics 4 bmp jpg and gif a Present sound 5 files wav mp3 a Present video 4 avi mpg mov rm ra asf and more Present combinations of graphics 3 sound 4 amp videol 4 and questionnaire items Present HTML Flash java ASP and any other browser compatible files 43 Optional parameters 5A allow you to set the screen location of images and movies as well as set the size of video clips all the way up to full screen Examples of Data Features Writes datal70to an easy to analyze CSV text file and SPSS SAV file Your choice of which variables 68 and to write to the data file Smart data structuring so results from multiple conditions can be viewed in a single Excel or SPSS file You can start analyzing your results immediately Two sets of data files are produced one organized by questionnaires 7 the other by variable namesT7h a Includes a utility to merge 7 CSV and TXT data files collected on different computers Optionally write reaction timels data for any response to the data file Optionally write data from multiple computers to a single folder on your networkl 83 4 MediaLab v2014 12 Setup System Requ
189. ution for your experiment e g 1024x768 To change these settings open the Display properties in your computer s Control Panel and select Settings Windows XP or right click on your desktop and select Screen Resolution Windows 7 13 Key Concepts The Basic Idea You need three things to conduct a MediaLab experiment First you need the materials or stimuli you want to show participants In many cases you may simply have a number of instructions and questions you want to give participants Although MediaLab has the capability to present many file types some people just want to administer a basic questionnaire If this is the case then you should find MediaLab an extremely easy way to do this However if you want to show images play sound files or movie clips display Word documents PowerPoint shows HTML pages or execute other stand alone programs you will find MediaLab to be extremely cooperative in this respect as well Second you need dependent measures Typically these will consist of questions you have regarding participants responses to your instructions or materials These questions may consist of lengthy open ended responses short fill in the blank type responses multiple choice and scale responses thought or recall listings or even ratings of subjects own responses MediaLab will allow you to ask your questions using a wide variety of question formats Finally you need an experimental design For this you need t
190. vant to your problem or question this will help us see as quickly as possible what s going on If we can quickly see and replicate the issue here then we can usually solve the problem much faster If you need to send a large file or set of files it s best to use a compressed zip folder System or Software Trouble If it s an apparent bug that you ve found or some unusual behavior try to tell us the following in your post or email e Does the same thing happen on multiple machines or just one Problems that replicate are usually much easier to fix e Is it seemingly random or predictable What do you have to do to make it happen e Does the same thing happen with any of the files that come with MediaLab in the Samples folder or is it specific to a single file that you ve created see above e What version of MediaLab e g ver20xx x xxx are you using You can find this by clicking About on the Help menu What version of Windows are you using Have you tried making sure that no other programs are running at the same time that might be causing some kind of interference MediaLab v2014 Note that the samples that come with MediaLab should always run fine If they don t you may have a system problem In this case the first thing to try is usually making sure you have the latest version of MediaLab One thing we can do is look over your system diagnostics and see if there are any obvious problems that could be corrected If you wa
191. we have calculated a number of variables from the current session we can present these values back to the subject Take a look at item 15 in the self esteem questionnaire You have lt rselabel gt self esteem lt face gt You scored lt rse gt out of a possible 6 Your average response time was lt rsert gt ms lt rsertspeed gt We are presenting six calculated variables here all from the responses xis file On the second line of the above question wording we see where we are using the calculated self esteem score We do this by placing the name of the calculated variable in angular brackets like this lt rse gt That s all there is to it using this method you can insert the value any calculated variable into the question wording of any MediaLab item Following the same idea we calculated and presented whether the subject was high or low in self esteem by using the calculation for lt rselabel gt as follows IF B29 gt 3 high low Using Excel s language for conditional logic here we re saying that if the subject s calculated self esteem is greater than 3 then they re high and that otherwise they re low Calculating and presenting the subject s average response time whether it is considered slow or fast are additional examples of the same idea calculating new variables from gathered data and using those values in the same session Save Calculated Variables to Your Data Files You can save calculate
192. won t share them with MediaLab For the same reason the space bar may cause a video to pause rather than causing MediaLab to continue to the next item In any case a click on the outer border will return keystroke input to MediaLab if and when this happens Due to setting of some Intel and NVidia brand chip sets use of Ctrl Alt the arrow keys may rotate your screen orientation instead of quitting the experiment in progress To disable the screen orientation in Windows 7 right click anywhere on your desktop and select Graphics Options gt Hot Keys gt Disable StatusBar The StatusBar is displayed at the bottom of the main MediaLab window Allows you to view some convenient information about the experimental session The first cell in the status bar displays information about current activities and when nothing else is going on it displays the name of the last experiment run during the current session The next cell displays the last Subject ID and Condition run during the current session The next two cells display the current date and time Can be hidden with option on the Tools menu Menu Commands These main menu commands are found at the top of the Experiment Editor window To launch the experiment editor either click on Experiment Editor in the main MediaLab window or click the MXEdit icon in the MediaLab startup folder These are the general commands used for editing Experiment exp and Questionnaire que files 12 Med
193. ype and specify the file name in the Question Wording File Name field Hint MediaLab writes the current subject number and condition to a file called CurrentSubjectInfo txt at the beginning of every session in case you want your custom program to access this information The Visual Basic code to do this is Open c medialab currentsubjectinfo txt For Input As 1 Input 1 subject subject Mid subject 11 Len subject 10 Input 1 condition condition Mid condition 11 Len condition 10 Close 1 If your program uses command line arguments you can specify them with the optional command line parameter 54 You can also run executable programs for all other item types in a questionnaire file by appending the letter c to the beginning the file name of the executable program and placing it in the Parameter s field of that item e g p7 cmyprog exe This is especially useful for programs that should run silently in the background as MediaLab will not attempt to keep the executable program visually in the foreground unless it is launched via the Executable item type Note that embedded executables can not integrate their data with MediaLab s If this is something you need then this can be accomplished with a Custom tem 88 Fill in the blank Exactly as it sounds fill in the blank items provide the question wording and space fora short open ended answer Fill in the blank responses become available for insertion within the quest

MediaLab User`s Guide, Version 2014

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