OpenSesame offline use on tablets - questions
Dear all,
we are considering using OpenSesame for a Flanker task and a questionnaire with 10-year-old children (offline, tablets) and still have a few questions, which we hope that you can answer.
First, we would like to run the experiment and questionnaire both offline on tablets. We already possess windows tablets, but considering buying additional android tablets, which we would like to use simultaneously.
From your page, we found that the runtime for android won’t be updated anymore, but we also found the latest version to be from 02/2020? We consider collecting the data between April and June 2021. Do you think using android instead of windows tablets could cause us problems and it would be “safer” to buy windows tablets? Also, neither of us is familiar with Python (we know some R Studio, HTML), do you think creating the experiment on a windows desktop pc and then running it on an android tablet could be more difficult than running it on windows tablets?
Second, I could not figure out, whether it is possible to set up a desktop shortcut for an experiment during offline data collection. Basically, we would like to immediately open the experiment by clicking on the shortcut, only put in the ID-number of the participant, run the experiment and afterwards automatically saved to a prior-assigned folder. Does this work, or would one need to always open the OpenSesame GUI? If it works, can you please tell us where to find instructions/a tutorial for that?
Finally, we plan to administer a roughly 40min-long questionnaire to the children, additionally to the Flanker task. We consider using OpenSesame instead of a survey-platform, because of its free offline usability. The items are mostly scales reaching from e. g. 1-4, but also some demographic info (age, gender, number of siblings, etc.). From what we have found, it is possible to do this in OpenSesame. Still, as OS' s main purpose seems to be building experiments, would there be any reason to not use it for such a long questionnaire? E. g. could the screen freeze because of the questionnaire’s length, is there any disadvantage in how the data is saved when compared to regular questionnaire survey platforms, or are there other things we should consider?
And would it possible to administer e. g. a scale, and then 5-10 sentences, for which the children have to rate a scale, on the same page (as in classical pen&paper-questionnaires), or would this only be possible one question after another on different slides?
Thank you already for your help and especially for making OpenSesame open to public!
Kind regards,
Sandy
Comments
Hi,
Do you think using android instead of windows tablets could cause us problems and it would be “safer” to buy windows tablets?
Yes, there is a fair chance that by running the droid backend will cause issues. Of course you can be lucky and the slightly outdated backend will still work. If you feel adventurous you might even delve into the droid backend and make it work by hacking the internals, but assuming that you don't have a lot of python experience, I would discourage you from that option, especially if you are in the luxury position to now make decision about studies to run next year. So, I would strongly recommend windows tablets.
do you think creating the experiment on a windows desktop pc and then running it on an android tablet could be more difficult than running it on windows tablets?
See above, probably yes.
Second, I could not figure out, whether it is possible to set up a desktop shortcut for an experiment during offline data collection.
Not quite the same as a short cut, but you can checkout the opensesamerun functionality: https://osdoc.cogsci.nl/3.3/manual/opensesamerun/
Also to not here, this probably won't work on droid devices.
is there any disadvantage in how the data is saved when compared to regular questionnaire survey platforms, or are there other things we should consider?
Compared to questionnaire-dedicated softwarte/websites, Opensesame is probably slightly less flexible and has fewer prebuilt options. Nevertheless, I would say that most questionnaires can be implemented with OS all right. You need to make sure of course that all your logging and stuff checks out, but that's generally advisable anyway. So, sure go ahead!
And would it possible to administer e. g. a scale, and then 5-10 sentences, for which the children have to rate a scale, on the same page (as in classical pen&paper-questionnaires), or would this only be possible one question after another on different slides?
That should be possible, but depending on the length/size of the sentences you might run into space issues on a single page. Then you would have to spread out over multiple displays. But still, in principal that is possible.
Hope this helps,
Eduard
Dear Eduard,
thank you so much for your helpful answers!
I still have some questions about opensesamerun (I am sorry if this might be a no-brainer, as I am totally new to this):
Are we talking about the “opensesamerun.bat”, which already exists in the OpenSesame folder? I already discovered that I can open it and then choose which experiment to start and where to save it to. With creating the code as shown in the link I can customize it, I assume (or rather create a new .bat-file for the specific experiment)?
How does it work exactly, I would create my experiment within the GUI and then at some point insert this code (In which command line exactly - are there not different command lines on each “slide” of my experiment)?
Also, if I don’t insert a subject number in the code, I would be able to insert the number manually, after opening the .bat-file?
Or did I get this wrong and there is a direct way to open the command-line separately?
Again, thank you a lot,
Sandy
If I am not mistaken, opensesamerun.bar is indeed the one you want, but best try it out with an experiment (maybe a quick example experiment that has the minimal elements. If you have created the experiment with the GUI, you can save it and then run it as argument to that opensesamerun.bat, so there is no need to write a new bat file.
If you open a terminal, you can start this program (opensesamerun.bat is nothing but a program), with the settings (indicated by the flags) that you want. If you just doubleclick on the bat, no default settings are added, so that you have to choose them "live". But once you did the experiment will start running. But at that phase, there is no need to code anything in the experiment. If your experiment runs in the regular mode (from within Opensesame gui), then calling it with opensesamerun.bat will (or at least should) not look different.
Does that make sense?
Eduard
Dear Eduard,
thank you for your fast reply. To clarify, you are talking about opening a terminal in Windows, e. g. with "cmd", and then running the argument to opensesamerun.bat with a command such as the example at the bottom of the link that you posted above, if I am not mistaken?
(We will have two persons supervising the experiment with ~ 15-20 children sitting at their tablets at the same time, and we are basically looking for the fastes and "safest" way they will be able to open the experiment for the children and make sure the data does not get lost.)
So the easiest possibilities would then be to
a) doubleclick on opensesamerun.bat and enter the settings manually
b) search "cmd", open the terminal, and enter the argument so that opensesamerun.bat or rather the experiment will run directly?
Thank you again,
Sandy
Hi Sandy,
Yes, that is what I mean. You could even write your own bat file (in which you already specified the settings for opensesamerun.bat), so that a double click on it starts the experiment right away. That shouldn't be too complicated.
Ps. Do you run on a windows tablet? Otherwise I am not sure that opensesamerun will work.
Good luck.
Eduard
Hello Eduard,
yes, we decided to go for windows tablets. Thank you very much for all the explanations!
Best regards, Sandy