ONEXP 1.2
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1. name for each button Only the value will be saved 5 3 HOW TO INCLUDE THE INSTRUCTION FILE AS A STAGE The trick is to have a simple form and no variables Your instructions lt input type submit name submit value start gt lt l OnExp Variables NumberOfRepetitions 1 gt 5 4 HOW TO REPORT BUGS REQUESTS AND TO HELP DEVELOPING If you want to help us developing this software you can help us with bug reports wish lists or your developing skills We created a developing server under http onexp dev textstrukturen uni goettingen de here you can find the actual revision of the software Here it is possible that the software is not stable For documentation we use https trac onexp dev textstrukturen uni goettingen de The revisions are stored in subversion https svn onexp dev textstrukturen uni goettingen de If you need an account for these please send an email to crcedv zentr uni goettingen de Yes you are allowed to change and redistribute OnExp but always include a link to the official homepage If you are a developer and you created some more features please let me know We might include it in the official distribution 6 OTHER NOTES 1 Be aware of potential network lags if you want to do experiments with OnExp in which time plays a crucial role This is especially problematic if you have large picture files or audio stimuli as their load time may vary from repetition to repetition If2. one is areal html5 progress bar also only supported by some browsers To achieve this you simply include the lt progress gt tag inside your stage file at the location you wish You can also have several progress bars 1 8 SEVERAL STAGES In an experiment you may need to have many stages stage 1 gives some general information stage 2 collects personal data stage 3 is for practice stage 4 is for warm up stage 5 is for the actual experiment and stage 6 asks for comments and observations This can easily be done in OnExp All you need is to create several stage html files You will name them stage1 htm stage2 html etc OnExp will show every stage as often as specified in the NumberOfRepetitions variable one after the other So first it will completely finish stage1 and only then proceed to stage2 NOTE Every stage has to specify the OnExp variables AT LEAST the Number of Repetitions If you don t have variables to replace you don t need an input file either Every stage has to advance via a form If you don t have a form containing the action next tag the next stage and even the next repetition will not be linked correctly So I advise to create the instructions page independently of OnExp or at least include a proceed button with action next on it 1 7 METADATA Assume you need 20 participants for your experiment It may take a day or a couple of weeks to get that number of participan
3. them on some independent website say your own homepage and let them be displayed from the external location using full url s in the input file I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THE LATTER ALTERNATIVE PROBABLY YOU WILL BE USING AN ONEXP SERVER THAT SOMEONE ELSE HAS SET UP AND HAS ALLOWED YOU TO USE WHY UPLOAD MB AFTER MB OF RESOURCE FILES TO HIS SERVER AFTER ALL HE MAY HAVE LIMITED BANDWIDTH THAT YOU ARE UNNECESSARILY EATING UP THIS WAY Of course you are free to choose your own way of displaying videos images and audios You can use flash or whatever method you want OnExp will only replace the variable name with the resource file name you specifiy and will not interfere any further 1 6 PROGRESS BAR Maybe you have one hundred or more stimuli you want your subject to see But you want him to know how much is still to come such that they don t quit on the penultimate slide being annoyed that this experiment will never end For this OnExp provides two progress bars e The first one is displayed on the title bar of the browser It looks like YOUR TITLE experiment running Progress i n You can decide for each stage file whether you want such a progress bar to be shown or not If you want it please include lt title gt lt title gt tags into the header of your html file If you don t want it just delete the lt title gt lt title gt tags It is as simple as that Note that some browsers do not support this feature e The second
4. this with only one variable In such a case OnExp allows you to have two distinct variables in one stage Each of them will come with their own input file which you can specify and every input file will be structured as you please The stagefile could look like this stage1 html lt html gt lt head gt lt meta http equiv Content Type content text html charset utf 8 gt lt head gt lt body gt lt div style width 100 gt lt div align left style Width 600px margin auto gt lt br gt lt br gt lt p align center gt lt b gt lt font size 4 gt Dear participant please answer the following question lt font gt lt b gt lt p gt 1 lt br gt lt center gt lt table gt lt tr gt lt td gt lt input type radio name answer value 7 gt yes lt br gt lt input type radio name answer value 6 gt no lt br gt lt input type radio name answer value 5 required required gt I don t know lt br gt lt td gt lt tr gt lt table gt lt center gt lt p align right gt lt input type submit name submit value Weiter gt lt p gt amp form gt lt div gt lt div gt lt center gt lt body gt lt html gt lt OnExp Variables NumberOfRepetitions 10 input1 txt input2 txt gt In this case variablename1 will be seeded from input1 txt and variablename2 will be seeded from input2 txt 1 5 THE _NOADVANCE FEATURE Assume you have an input file and a sta
5. ONEXP 1 2 USER MANUAL The official homepage of OnExp is http onexp textstrukturen uni goettingen de Onexp is an experimental software that gives you the power and flexibility to create web based experiments in a matter of minutes But first you need to understand how onexp works I will give you a simple example to start with 1 GETTING THE IDEA 1 1 WHAT YOU NEED FOR AN EXPERIMENT You want a nice little experiment in which you have ten questions and for each of them you want to give three answer options with texts that differ from question to question like this So you want participants to see something like this Dear participant please answer the following question Question 1 Choose one of these answers Answer 1 specific to question 1 Answer 2 specific to question 1 Answer 3 specific to question 1 submit And then you want to show Question 2 whit the specific answers Dear participant please answer the following question Question 2 Choose one of these answers Answer 1 specific to question 2 Answer 2 specific to question 2 Answer 3 specific to question 2 submit First thing you need is the list of stimuli Let us create a text file called input1 txt in which you just write up your questions and all the answers Of course you don t write question1 in your file but instead your question 1 e g What do you think about OnExp input1 txt Question1 answer1q1 a
6. OfRepetitions 10 input1 txt gt In this example the stimulus from you input1 txt will appear twice on the page NOTE HOWEVER THAT IF VARIABLENAME_NOADVANCE APPEARS BEFORE OR WITHOUT VARIABLENAME YOU GET TOTALLY UNEXPECTED RESULTS OR AN ERROR MESSAGE YOU CAN USE THE __NOADVANCE FEATURE FOR INSTANCE TO SAVE THE TEXT OF A STIMULUS IN THE RESULTS FILE AS IN lt FORM ACTION NEXT METHOD POST gt lt P gt VARIABLENAME lt P gt lt INPUT TYPE HIDDEN NAME TEXT VALUE VARIABLENAME_NOADVANCE gt lt P gt HRE WEITERF HRUNG lt INPUT TYPE TEXT NAME ANSWER SIZE 70 AUOFOCUS AUTOFOCUS REQUIRED REQUIRED gt lt P gt lt BR gt lt P ALIGN RIGHT gt lt INPUT TYPE SUBMIT NAME SUBMIT VALUE WEITER gt lt P gt lt FORM gt 1 6 RESOURCE FILES You can use resource files such as audio video or picture files Basically the way to use them is very simple you include the filenames with respective path or url in your input file and loop through the filenames with variablename So for instance you can display a sound with variablename in the stage file and the input file could contain something like lt audio src http myhomepage com mystimulus1 mp3 gt Note that you can a either upload your resource files onto the onexp server In this case you can use relative path to display them So you could simply have resources mystimulus1 mp3 in your input file b or you can store
7. ge file For some reason you want a stimulus to appear twice on the same page There are two ways to achieve this either you do some hard thinking and organize your input txt such a way that you every stimulus appears twice and randomization effects are successfully cancelled Or you use the _noadvance feature If you write variablename_noadvance into your stage file OnExp will not take the NEXT element of your input file but the same it used before stage1 html lt html gt lt head gt lt meta http equiv Content Type content text html charset utf 8 gt lt head gt lt body gt lt div style width 100 gt lt div align left style Width 600px margin auto gt lt br gt lt br gt lt p align center gt lt b gt lt font size 4 gt Dear participant please answer the following question lt font gt lt b gt lt p gt lt br gt here it appears again lt br gt lt center gt lt table gt lt tr gt lt td gt lt input type radio name answer value 7 gt yes lt br gt lt input type radio name answer value 6 gt no lt br gt lt input type radio name answer value 5 required required gt I don t know lt br gt lt td gt lt tr gt lt table gt lt center gt lt p align right gt lt input type submit name submit value Weiter gt lt p gt form gt lt div gt lt div gt lt center gt lt body gt lt html gt lt l OnExp Variables Number
8. gt lt input type submit name submit value continue gt lt p gt amp form gt lt div gt lt div gt lt center gt lt body gt lt html gt lt OnExp Variables NumberOfRepetitions 10 input1 txt gt You can see that at the bottom of the page you inserted a comment that tells OnExp that you want the page to appear 10 times and you want the variablename1 to be replaced by material from input1 txt Now OnExp will display stage1 html exactly ten times and it will loop through your input1 txt Every time it finds an occurrence of variablename in stage1 html it will take the next element of input1 txt This will produce the desired result NOTE THAT YOU ALWAYS NEED THE TURQUOISE MARKED LINES IN ORDER FOR ONEXP TO WORK EVEN IF YOU KNOW HTML AND YOU KNOW THAT NEXT IS NO VALID ACTION FOR A FORM DON T WORRY ONEXP WILL KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THAT 1 2 RANDOMIZING Of course if you want an experiment you probably want to have many participants and you want them to see your stimuli in a random order So while person1 sees question7 first person2 could see question1 first and so on But of course you don t want the specific answer to question 7 to appear below question 1 OnExp can do that for you but you need to use two additional tags in your input1 txt The lt block gt lt block gt tag and the lt random gt tag Using lt block gt is simpe you just include a bunch of stimuli in a block and OnExp will
9. l recognize that it has to distribute people across these subexperiments and will simply do it You only have to distribute ONE link to your participants This is the correct way to zip your experiment the blue ones are directories experimentname zip experiment1 metadata txt stage1 html stage2 html stage3 html input1 txt input2 txt input3 txt experiment2 metadata txt stage1 html stage2 html stage3 html input1 txt input2 txt input3 txt These are wrong ways to zip your experiment Here you have embedded your experiment data too much experimentname zip erimentname eriment1 stage3 html input1 txt input2 txt input3 txt experiment2 metadata txt stage1 html input2 txt input3 txt Here you have not embedded the files enough experimentname zip adata txt stage1 htm stage2 html stage3 html input1 txt input2 Mput3 txt NOTE THAT YOU WILL HAVE TO EMBED YOUR STIMULI AND STAGE FILES UNDER A DIRECTORY EVEN IF YOU HAVE ONLY ONE EXPERIMENT ONEXP ALWAYS ASSUMES MULTIPLE EXPERIMENTS AND TREATS ONE SINGLE EXPERIMENT JUST AS A SPECIAL CASE 2 TEN GOOD RULES FOR ONEXP 1 Test your stage files They should be displayed properly in your browser on your local machine If they are not OnExp will not fix them 2 Test your stage files independently manually replacing the varnames with exactly what appears between the id s in your stimuli fi
10. le This way you can check whether what you get as a result will look and function the way you want 3 Never omit or closing tags 4 Never use uppercase filenames windows and linux treat those differently and it will most likely cause problems 5 Don t use special characters in your stimuli files Use html codes instead 6 Don t use and in stimuli files 7 Check to set the number of repetitions for each stage correctly It maybe lower than the number of available stimuli but not higher 8 If your randomization fails and OnExp displays the wrong stimuli you probably got the blocks wrong 9 You can test OnExp on your local machine using WAMPserver 10 You should always test your experiment online before sending out the link 3 USING THE ONEXP SERVER 3 1 UPLOADING AN EXPERIMENT Go to http onexp textstrukturen uni goettingen de and click to Register Fill out the Form and wait for activation by administrator After activation you have to go to the upload page Enter your user name and your password Select the name of the zip file containing directories with the subexperiment each directory must contain stage files and input files A metadata file is optional Submit If you get any errors try to fix the file where the error occurred If you think the File should be OK send a copy to crcedv zentr uni goettingen de with the error message that occurs If you think you found a bug please repo
11. nswer2q1 answer3q1 Question2 answer1q2 answer2q2 answer3q2 Now OnExp will want to know how your page should look like There is no way OnExp can guess that you want your answers one below the other how many of the lines in the input1 txt should appear at once etc While other programs will give you either a what you see is what you get editor or some funky tag set to create your page design OnExp relies on simple html tags If you have absolutely no idea about html you can use our samples but some of your colleagues will probably gladly help after all someone must have written your homepage PHP and Javascript is not allowed in this pages So here is an example html page We name it stage1 html stage1 html lt html gt lt head gt lt meta http equiv Content Type content text html charset utf 8 gt lt head gt lt body gt lt div style width 100 gt lt div align left style Width 600px margin auto gt lt br gt lt br gt lt p align center gt lt b gt lt font size 4 gt Dear participant please answer the following question lt font gt lt b gt lt p gt lt center gt lt table gt lt tr gt lt td gt lt input type radio name answer value 7 gt ae lt input type radio name answer value 6 gt lt br gt lt input type radio name answer value 5 required required gt variablename lt br gt lt td gt lt tr gt lt table gt lt center gt lt p align right
12. rt it at http bugs onexp dev textstrukturen uni goettingen de If you get no errors save the link that you get This link is essential you should a Either include this link into your instruction page b Ifyour instruction page is already a stage in the experiment you will have to send out the whole link to your participants a is the better and safer option for most cases Note that after testing the experiment you should upload exactly the same zip again if you are satisfied This way you make sure you don t see your test answers in the results files in the end 3 2 VIEWING RESULTS Go the results page Log in and you will automatically see a number of csv files if results already exist Click on them and save them wherever you please 4 SETTING UP YOUR OWN ONEXP SERVER It is possible to create an own onexp server but an installer is not yet provided Please contact us for the download links and support lt A step to step howto is under construction gt 5 How Tos 5 1 HOW TO DISPLAY AUDIO STIMULI lt audio src varname controls autoplay gt Your browser does not support the audio element lt audio gt 5 2 HOW TO DISPLAY RADIO BUTTONS lt input type radio name answer value 7 gt yes lt br gt lt input type radio name answer value 6 gt no lt br gt lt input type radio name answer value 5 required required gt I don t know lt br gt Note that you need to have the SAME
13. sted blocks There is no limit for the embedding of blocks So you can embed a block in a block in a block in a block input1 txt lt block gt lt block gt Question1 lt block gt answer1q1 answer2q1 answer3q1 lt block gt lt block gt lt block gt Question2 lt block gt answer1q2 answer2q2 answer3q2 lt block gt lt block gt lt block gt 1 3 STIMULUS IDs You don t need to use stimulus IDs in OnExp But there are good reasons to do so and that is related to the way OnExp will save your material OnExp will create one answers file for each experiment And it will append a new line with every new answer that is choosen by any participant Of course you can keep the participants apart since OnExp will start every new line with the unique participant ID Also it will save the relative time the answer has been given with an exactness going into microseconds But what you will not know is which stimulus question your participant has seen Of course if the data is not randomized you could reconstruct that but it will take a long time If you choose to use IDs however OnExp will save the ID of the stimulus the participant has seen when selecting the particular answer You can see an example here input1 txt lt id q1 gt Question1 lt id gt lt id q1 al gt answer1q1 lt id gt lt id q1 a2 gt answer2q1 lt id gt lt id q1 a3 gt answer3q1 lt id gt lt id q2 gt Q
14. then keep those stimuli together whenever randomizing OnExp will randomize a block if and only if the first tag that follows the lt block gt tag is lt random gt So for our example we can do this input1 txt lt block gt lt block gt Question1 answer1q1 answer2q1 answer3q1 lt block gt lt block gt Question2 answer1q2 answer2q2 answer3q2 lt block gt lt block gt Now OnExp will randomize the order of question answer blocks but will not change the order of questions and answers within each block Assume for instance that you include the random tag into the first question answer block like this lt block gt Question1 answer1q1 answer2q1 answer3q1 lt block gt This would make OnExp shuffle the order of Questions and answers so you could end up having the question appear where an answer should Of course you might want to keep the order of the questions fixed but you want to randomize only the order of the answers for each question This can be achieved like this input1 txt lt block gt Question1 lt block gt answer1q1 answer2 q1 answer3 q1 lt block gt Question2 lt block gt answer1q2 answer2 q2 answer3 q2 lt block gt lt block gt And of course you could want to randomize the order of the questions AND the order of the answers for each question This is done as follows note that it may take some thinking to realize why we need ne
15. ts How do you know when you reached it Simple OnExp will send you a mail And even more if you do this experiment in cooperation with some other people OnExp will send an E Mail to everyone involved What you need to do is this create a file called metadata txt You include the number of needed participants into this file and all the involved e mail addresses As soon as the number of participants is reached OnExp will close down the experiment and send out a notification to all e mail addresses The metadata file could look like this metadata txt lt l OnExp Variables NumberOfParticipants 100 NumberOfMails 3 first domain com second otherdomain com third something something gt NOTE THAT THE METADATA TXT IS OBLIGATORY 1 8 LATIN SQUARE AND THE LIKE Now assume that for some reason you have one big experiment in which you have to split your stimuli across participants In other words you want some group of participants to see one set of stimuli and another group of participants to see another group of stimuli With other software you could simply create two indepentend experiments and send one link to one group of people and another link to the other group of people OnExp fortunately helps here You simply place your stage files your stimuli files and your metadata files for each sub experiment into a directory And you zip all of these directories together When you upload the zip file OnExp wil
16. uestion2 lt id gt lt id q2 al gt answer1q2 lt id gt lt id q2 a2 gt answer2q2 lt id gt lt id q2 a3 gt answer3q2 lt id gt There is one more reason you may want to use id s Per default OnExp will assume that every new line is a stimulus if you don t use IDs In fact if you only use the opening tags for ids and you don t close them OnExp will assume that every end of a line is a closing ID But if you have long stimuli containing several lines it may be usefull to actually close the ids This way OnExp will know that several lines belong to only one stimulus It is good practice to give your stimuli IDs according to your experimental factors and conditions such that you can import them easily into your statistics program Also note that if you want to have new lines actually appear in the html file you should use html tags for this such as lt br gt or lt p gt lt p gt etc DON T EVER USE THE OR SIGNS IN YOUR INPUT FILES THAT WILL MOST LIKELY CAUSE SEVERE ERRORS IN SOME LATER VERSION OF ONEXP THIS WILL BE TAKEN CARE OF 1 4 SEVERAL INPUT FILES It is not particularly likely that you will ever need several variables for one stage in OnExp But it s good to know that you CAN have that if you need it Assume you want an experiment in which you want to randomly pair two sets of stimuli say stimulus 1 n should be randomly paired with stimulus a z It is easy to see that you cannot do
17. you have simple text stimuli the lag may not be relevant after all 2 If anyone wants to do some serious testing on the useage of OnExp for timed experiments I would like to know the results Copyright Edgar Onea 2011 Thanks to Alexander Syring for lots of help in the development of OnExp
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