Counterbalancing

researchbyliv

Hello,

I’ve watched the tutorials on counterbalancing but I’m still confused (This is my first OS experiment so bare with me!)

I have a within-participant design with 6 conditions, and I need to counterbalance those 6 conditions. I’ve attached a picture of my overview.

If anyone could guide me through how to make it so that every participant sees a random order, that would be great.

Thanks in advance

sebastiaan

Hi,

Before thinking about the implementation, I'd say you first need to clearly define what you want to do. Counterbalancing is a general term that can mean many slightly different things. You also talk about randomizing the block order, which is yet something different, in the sense that counterbalancing generally refers to a systematic, non-random variation of the block order.

So how exactly do you want the order of the six blocks to vary between participants?

Cheers!
Sebastiaan

researchbyliv

Thanks for the reply Sebastiaan. I hadn't realised I'd been using the word counterbalancing wrong.

So, I have 6 conditions. I want to ensure that each participant sees a random order of the conditions. Eg. ParticipantA: 1-2-3-4-5-6
ParticipantB: 1-3-5-2-4-6
ParticipantC: 6-4-2-3-5-1
etc.

sebastiaan

Ok, I see. In that case, I would create an "outer loop" where you specify the block numbers in a random order. Then, in the "outer sequence" you use Run-if statements to determine which of the 6 blocks should be executed. Does that make sense? I attached it as an example.