Hi empirisoft,

I am programming a straightforward questionnaire using MediaLab. Now, when I run some of the conditions, once the experiment is over, I get several messages saying approximatey:
  • “variable XXX contains numerical characters but is stored as a string. The values will be stored in SPSS as string values.
  • variable XXX string characters but is stored as a numerical. The values will be stored in SPSS as numerical values. Non-numerical values may be lost in the conversion.”
The baffling thing is that this happens to conditions where I changed nothing and where there was previously no such message. Yesterday night this appeared for 2 out of 10 conditions and this morning for 8 out of 10! I have checked the boxed ticked for each variable (text for essays, but not for scales) and all seems in order.

Why does this happen? How do I prevent the message from occuring? Can I collect data in spite of the message (is the data OK)? The study starts Tuesday next week, so if you have a remedy I would be very grateful!

Thank you in advance,

Liselott Pettersonm INSEAD