Problem with saving data

vmloaiza1

I've seen this problem come up for others on this forum that a participant finishes a study and yet there are no data saved. I encountered a similar issue for a study that has been running successfully for multiple other participants, except that I already have some code to endAndRedirect the study if it fails to submit/append the data (which is what happened). My research assistant and I immediately and independently checked that it worked fine for us on both Edge and Chrome. This all makes me think that it was a problem on the participant's side, but I would like to know if it's something we can identify and fix efficiently.

Here are possible explanations that have been suggested in prior threads, but why they can't be the issue:

✖️ According to this thread possible issues could include bad internet connection, too large result data, and bug in the programming, but none of those are likely given that we specifically verify the participant's internet connection speed before starting as well as the fact that the experiment has worked fine for other participants, so it can't be the latter two issues either.

✖️According to this thread it could be an unreliable browser, but the participant was using Edge. We also block participants from reloading (which was not the error here anyway), and the suggestion that cookies could play a role was discounted (thought not sure why either way).

My questions are (1) whether there are any other possible causes and (2) whether there are methods to detect/resolve those causes? Thanks in advance!

Andrew9698

I had similar issue It might be related to browser privacy settings that block cookies or local data saving Try asking participants to disable such features during the study Sometimes switching to Firefox helps too Additionally its worth checking for conflicts with browser extensions that might interfere with data saving If that doesnt work it might be a device specific issue on the participants side

Greetings, Andrew 😉

vmloaiza1

In case it helps for others and for future reference for me at least, here is what might be happening:

• Somehow the page reloads, and because we have reloading blocked on the study (which is necessary), JATOS calls it a fail but somehow the study continues. No idea why.
• Given that JATOS thinks it's a fail, there is no way to submit the data. We added a catch to the appendResultData to direct participants to a screen to call the research assistant. Indeed, the console shows multiple retries to post the data before it finally gives up.

Unfortunately I cannot think of a solution to this given that, from the participant's side of things, everything is going fine as the study continues. So, for now, the bandage on the issue is to have the research asisstant check that the data are getting submitted at the start of the study, and if not, to close the page and try again. If the data stop being submitted somewhere in the middle of the study, this pause screen shows up at the very end, prompting the participant to call the research assistant so that the data can be manually saved as I have them stored to the window. If anyone has a better suggestion I'm happy to hear it. Otherwise I hope that helps save some time and stress from the randomness of whether data get saved or not 🤪 Many thanks to Kristian for chatting about this with me. Cheers!