how to interpret on-line data?

[syzygy42]

I collected some data with the on-line rating item while showing a video. Now, I am trying to interpret the data. It appears that the values typically range from 0 to 2. Is this the correct range? Sometimes, though, the value is -1. What does this mean?

(Incidentally, my "OnLineViewer" utility doesn't work. If I try to open the data file, I get an error message reading "Error 339. Component 'MSCOMCT2.OCX' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid.")

[syzygy42]

A further question: Different participants have different numbers of on-line data points collected, even though they saw the same video. What does this mean?

[jarvis24]

[note from moderator: to users looking for posts related to internet data collection--the online data referred to in this post is NOT about internet data collection--it's in reference to locally collected data--ratings that occur "online" in the sense that they occur at the same time as an audio or video file is played]

The online data analysis utility was written back when we created the earliest releases of MediaLab (1998-2002). It uses third part components provided by National Instruments which were super cool at the time, but may not be compatible with newer versions of Windows (especially Vista and XP). We can fix these if necessary. The more immediate issue it would seem is whether MediaLab is recording and properly saving your online response data. It is not unusual to have some small variability in the number of responses because there is some error do to video startup, frame loss, timing intervals and such. But if the difference in observation points is more than a VERY small proportion then we ought to look at your data. In terms of whether you have appropriate values, it depends on the scale define in your que file--any chance you could post the que file and the resulting data file?

Finally on the issue of the specific file referenced in the error (mscomct2.ocx) it would be helpful to know what version of Windows and MediaLab you are running. We've got access to many combinations here and I could try to replicate given whatever you have. Having the data file again, would be very helpful here.