Duplicate IDs - Data overwritten regardless of selection (case 10795)

[sdelury]

Greetings,

From time to time, an RA in our lab accidentally enters an incorrect participant ID number at the beginning of a session. If this ID number matches that of a prior participant, then as soon as the DirectRT portion of the experiment begins, DirectRT gives an error message saying that this data file already exists and asking the user whether they want to replace the prior data file with data from the current session (with the options "Yes" and "No").

The problem we've run into, though, is that DirectRT will overwrite the previous data file no matter what option one selects. If one selects "Yes," then, understandably, the current session continues uninterrupted and the current participant's data will overwrite that of the previous participant with the same ID number. If one selects "No," however, the DirectRT task is aborted, but the previous participants' data file is overwritten nonetheless. In these instances, the new data file for the duplicate ID number is completely blank.

It would be ideal if there were a way to change it so that selecting "No" prevented the previous data file from being overwritten. That would allow the RA to check the ID numbers and restart the current participant without losing the previous data. I know there is a setting that can be changed so this warning message doesn't pop up, and the new data file automatically overwrites the old one, but this isn't our preferred solution. We haven't been able to find any other settings that affect the behavior of DirectRT in these situations.

We are currently using DirectRT v.2010.2.103.1115

Thanks in advance for any help or insight you're able to offer!

[jason_reed]

Hi sdelury,
I can understand why this would be troublesome. I wonder if it's because you are running DirectRT v.2010.2. I would encourage to install DirectRT v.2010.3.102 (you can find it here: http://empirisoft.com/download_old.aspx). You would be able to do this for no charge. The 2010.3 version was designed to deal with some issues in the 2010.2 version, so please try installing the 2010.3 version and let me know if this solves the problem.