Missing Data

Hi Blair,

Jessica e-mailed you about a data issue we are having with our questions that require participants to checkboxes. We cannot find any additional variable names for these boxes so I attached the checkbox question, it is in the form of an html document and also the way it was typed up in the Medialab Experiment Editor. Please let me know if there is anything else I need to attach in order to find this missing data.

Thank you for all of your help!

Because multiple checkboxes can be selected, you need a variable for each one. e.g., see in "easier.txt" that all the variable names in the html are called "easier". To make this work, the variable name in the .que file would also have to be "easier" rather than CONTEXTEASY. And then, because you have multiple instances of that variable being recorded, they must be indicated in the HTML as "easier_01", "easier_02", "easier_03" and so on. Finally, you need to tell MediaLab how many variables are being collected for this item. If there are, say 40 checkboxes for the item "easier", then you would use the [I]v[/I] (variables) parameter to indicate this--e.g., [I](v40)[/I] in the [I]parameters[/I] field of the "easier" item in the que file.

Hope this helps. If it sound confusing (a good bet?), let me know and I can elaborate or help you with the files. See also:

[URL]http://www.empirisoft.com/medialab/help/single_vs__multiple_variables.htm[/URL]

Blair

ps., Note that if you compare this html code with that of questions using RADIO buttons, it will look correct. That's because unlike checkboxes, radio buttons FORCE a user into selecting just ONE option. Consequently, you don't need more than a single variable to tell you what happened. Check boxes are one of the few input formats that get messy like this.