Check if a survey-text response matches an element in an array and define different outcomes

[jelkastojanov]

Hello!

I am planning to run a two-part experiment on Prolific. In the first part, participants will be randomly allocated to one of the two groups - Square or Triangle. This means that for the second part of the experiment (happening ~7 days later), I will know which Prolific IDs have been assigned to which group membership in advance.

I am currently coding the second part of the experiment and I am trying to see which group has each participant been assigned to in part one by comparing the Prolific ID they type in to Prolific IDs I have in the two arrays (prolificIDsSquare, prolificIDsTriangle). Depending on the outcome of this comparison, I want to change the value of currentGroupMembership to reflect their group membership from part one. If the Prolific ID does not match any element from two pre-defined arrays, I want participants to see an alert and repeat the survey-text element (to basically double-check whether they entered the Prolific ID correctly).

            var currentGroupMembership;

          // All participants from Part 1 who were allocated to the 'Square group.
            const prolificIDsSquare = ['111', '222', '333', '444'];

          // All participants from Part 1 who were allocated to the 'Triangle' group.
            const prolificIDsTriangle = ['555', '666', '777', '888'];

            // Screen where participants type in their Prolific ID
            var prolificIDScreen = {
                type: 'survey-text',
                questions: [
                {prompt: 'Welcome to the second part of the experiment! <br> <br> Please enter your <b>Prolific ID</b> in the text box below.', 
                required: true,
                name: "prolificID"},
                ],
                button_label: 'Next',
                on_finish: function(data){
                    if(prolificIDsSquare.includes(data.response.prolificID)){
                        var currentGroupMembership = 'Square';
                    } else if(prolificIDsTriangle.includes(data.response.prolificID)){
                        var currentGroupMembership = 'Triangle';
                    } else {
                        alert('Prolific ID not recognised. Please double-check that your Prolific ID is correct.'); 
                        // HERE I'D LIKE PARTICIPANT TO STAY ON THE SAME SCREEN AND FIX THEIR PROLIFIC ID
                    }
                }
            }

Currently, the if-else statement always goes to 'else' and shows the alert box. Does anyone have an idea how to access what the participants have typed and compare that to the two arrays?

Thank you in advance!

Note: In the final version of the experiment, I will probably not rely on what participants have typed, but scrape their Prolific IDs directly, but the questions about accessing their responses and comparing them to an external value (or values) still bug me.

[jodeleeuw]

Hi @jelkastojanov,

My approach to debugging this would be to put a breakpoint in the on_finish function to see what the value of data.response.prolificID is. If you try that, what do you see?

In case you aren't familiar with adding a breakpoint, here's a short overview.

[jelkastojanov]

Hi @jodeleeuw, thank you for this! It turned out that the issue was not in the code above but in the way I was approaching debugging. I relied on console.log(currentGroupMembership) that kept giving me 'undefined' only because console.log was executed prior to me (the participant) actually providing a survey-text input. When it comes to why the if-else statement was being evaluated at else, the function was working properly after a few attempts, there was probably a typo involved somewhere. I will paste the final code in the comment below in case anyone needs it. Thanks for the prompt once again!

[jelkastojanov]

In case anyone ever needs a similar solution, the code below worked (just specify the right timeline in jsPsych.init at the very end):

            // Prolific ID screen
            var prolificIDScreen = {
                type: 'survey-text',
                questions: [
                {prompt: 'Welcome to the second part of the experiment! <br> <br> Please enter your <b>Prolific ID</b> in the text box below.', 
                required: true,
                name: "prolificID"},
                ],
                button_label: 'Next',
                on_finish: function(data){
                    if(prolificIDsSquare.includes(data.response.prolificID)){
                        currentGroupMembership = 'Square';
                        prolificIDValidity = 'Valid';
                    } else if(prolificIDsTriangle.includes(data.response.prolificID)){
                        currentGroupMembership = 'Triangle';
                        prolificIDValidity = 'Valid';
                    } else {
                        alert('Prolific ID not recognised. Please double-check that your Prolific ID is correct.');
                        prolificIDValidity = 'Invalid';
                    }
                }
            }

            // Repetition of the Prolific ID screen for those who entered an invalid Prolific ID
            var prolificIDScreenRepeat = {
                type: 'survey-text',
                questions: [
                {prompt: 'Your Prolific ID was not recognised. <br> <br> Please enter the <b>Prolific ID you used in the first part of the experiment</b> in the text box below.', 
                required: true,
                name: "prolificID"},
                ],
                button_label: 'Next',
                on_finish: function(data){
                    if(prolificIDsSquare.includes(data.response.prolificID)){
                        currentGroupMembership = 'Square';
                        prolificIDValidity = 'Valid';
                    } else if(prolificIDsTriangle.includes(data.response.prolificID)){
                        currentGroupMembership = 'Triangle';
                        prolificIDValidity = 'Valid';
                    } else {
                        alert('Prolific ID not recognised. Please double-check that your Prolific ID is correct.');
                        prolificIDValidity = 'Invalid';
                    }
                }
            }

            // Check if participant entered a valid Prolific ID - if not, repeat the screen.
            var ifProlificIDRepeat = {
                timeline: [prolificIDScreenRepeat],
                conditional_function: function(){
                    if(prolificIDValidity == 'Invalid'){
                        return true;
                    } else {
                        return false;
                    }
                }
            };

[becky-gilbert]

Thanks for posting the solution!

[abhilasha-kumar]

Thanks for posting this, this was really helpful!

I am programming a similar experiment where I'd like participants to stay on the same page and retype their response if it is not among a predefined set of words (extracted via a json file). Is there a way to program this without having to create a repetition trial? My problem is that I want to do this at the trial level so my stimuli changes on every trial and hence the repeat function doesn't work for me assuming it would be executed after practice_procedure has been called for the full stimuli set.

Here's the relevant code. Any ideas @jodeleeuw @becky-gilbert?

var practice_trial = {
        type: jsPsychSurveyText,
        questions: [
          {prompt: jsPsych.timelineVariable('guess1_final'), required: true},
          {prompt: jsPsych.timelineVariable('guess2_final'), required: true}
        ],
        button_label: 'Next',
        data: {
          typeoftrial: 'practice',
          wordpair: jsPsych.timelineVariable('wordpair'),
          clue: jsPsych.timelineVariable('value'),
          boardwords: jsPsych.timelineVariable('boardwords'),
          accessibility: jsPsych.timelineVariable('accessibility'),
          distinctiveness: jsPsych.timelineVariable('distinctiveness'),
          Board: jsPsych.timelineVariable('Board'),
          Experiment: jsPsych.timelineVariable('Experiment'),
          subject: subject_id
        },
        on_finish: function(data){
                    var w1 = data.response.Q0.toLowerCase()
                    var w2 = data.response.Q1.toLowerCase()
                    if(data.boardwords.includes(w1) & data.boardwords.includes(w2)){
                        respNotonBoard = false
                    } else {
                        alert('You typed a word that is not on the board, please enter a valid word.'); 
                        respNotonBoard = true
                        // HERE I'D LIKE PARTICIPANT TO STAY ON THE SAME SCREEN AND FIX THEIR RESPONSES
                    }

                }
    };

var practice_procedure = {
      timeline: [practice_trial],
      timeline_variables: practicestimuli,
      randomize_order: true
    };