QuickInfo
Text labels provide the response alternatives (e.g., strongly agree, female, >10,000, and so forth, very positive) for scale response and thought rating items. If you specify none, for a given text label, then that label will appear blank. This can be used, for example, to create a scale anchored only at the ends.
Hints
You can also now include <specify> in the text label of any response option. This will not be displayed to the subject but will cause MediaLab to prompt subjects to enter a text response. This is handy in cases where you want to provide an alternative such as "other" e.g. If you wanted the seventh option to be "other" and you wanted subjects to specify what "other" means, then enter other <specify> for the text label. The actual text response will be written to the data file.
See also Editing Tips and Tricks for details on how to avoid repeatedly typing scale responses when many items use the same scale. When an item is copied and pasted in the overview editor using the record selector at the far left (selects the whole item), all details are copied as well (i.e., including response options if the item is a scale response).
Advanced Hints
If you want to specify a specific location for a button you can add top and left parameters to the text label. For example, if you want to relocate a button with a text label of "skip this question" then you could modify it like this: "skip this question (t.7,l.7)" That would make the button appear 70% of the way across and 70% of the way down the screen.
If you want to adjust the size of the button you can add height and width parameters--again to the text label. In the example above, if we wanted to resize the button as well as relocating it, we could modify it like this: "skip this question (t.7,l.7,w.2)". This would produce the same result as above except the label would be 20% of the screen width.
Finally, if you want to place the text label within the button itself, then simply put the text label in the button label field and leave the parameters in the text label field, like this:
Inserting Variables in Response Options
In prior versions, you could insert variables into the question wording. In v2008, you can also insert variables into the response options. e.g., if you have prior responses called "friend1" and "friend2" you could have response options later on like:
1. I would pick <friend1>
2. I would pick <friend2>
This will work to insert prior responses from fill-in-the-blank items, scale responses, multiple responses, and any response.xls variables you have calculated (see Advanced Features). These values can be inserted into the response options of any item that allows response options.
Using HTML for Labels
If you want to create custom formatted or graphic labels for your scale response options, you can enter an HTML file or URL in place of the standard text label. This can be used to present formatted text or images beside each button.
Here is an example. Paste this code into a text file and save it as "label1.htm" in your experiment folder. You can preview the result by opening the file in Internet Explorer.
<body style="font: 12pt arial; color: navy; background: #ccccff; margin: 0px">
<i>Strongly</i> Agree
</body>
Enter "label1.htm" for your button label and this is how it will appear:
See also
labels, especially for information regarding valid input options and recoding response data