Questionnaire Files: Key Concepts

It is recommended to first read the introduction and key concepts associated with Experiment Files before reading this section.

Questionnaires are the foundation of MediaLab. MediaLab questionnaires are very flexible in terms of presenting files and in terms of data acquisition. The questionnaire editor allows to you to create, view and edit your questionnaires.

In the experiment file, you identify the files to be presented in your various conditions. These files can be images, sounds, videos, executables, Word and WordPerfect documents, HTML pages on your hard drive or the web, PowerPoint shows, and questionnaires. Questionnaires differ from the other file types in that they are a single self-contained file full of instructions for MediaLab. These instructions also can tell MediaLab to present various files (e.g., images, sounds, videos, executables, Word documents, PowerPoint shows etc.), 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 and multiple response (select all that apply) questions, 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).

In many cases, you may simply want to present information through an HTML document, Word document or PowerPoint show, or various stimuli via image, sound or video files. After presenting these files you can have MediaLab ask your questions. Alternatively, MediaLab's multi-media flexibility also allows you in most cases to combine questions and media, presenting them simultaneously.

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. Again, the difference is that in questionnaires you also ask 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.

Another key concept to get with questionnaires is that they are self-contained. Once a questionnaire file 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.).

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.