ChoiceTableWiz: Makes Choice Tables Help   Copyright

Survey Name: Short Name: Background Color:
Now push this button:
Trial Number:
Branch Colors:            
Branch Consequences:
Branch Consequences:
           

HELP Return to choiceWiz

This program was written by Michael Birnbaum to make the displays of choice problems for studies such as in Birnbaum and Diecidue (2015). Some improvements have been added since then.

1. To use this program for first time, try the following example. First give the study a name and a one-word short name (leave no blanks in the short name). Type these names, My First Choice Study, and choice_01 in the first row of the table. The survey's long name will be placed in the title bar and as a title on the page. The short name will be entered as a hidden variable in the survey as the first variable (which is also called 00exp).

2. Now push the button in the second row marked 1. Start Form. This will insert the starting HTML tags and also put in the hidden variables, including exp, date, time, and Remote Address (IP). (The remote address will help you identify multiple submissions from the same person. Multiple submissions usually occur within a few minutes of each other, when the person uses the back button to go back and recheck his or her answers or add a comment, then the person clicks the submit button again.)

3. Now, type in the three branch consequences of your first choice problem for both gambles. This text will be printed in the form when you press the "Make Table" button.

When you press the Make Table button, the HTML will be created to create the display of a choice problem in table format with colors you specified for the three events. The default are red, white, and blue.

You can repeat step 3 up to 90 times, but it is advisable not to have too many items in a single form.

4. If you would like to add demographic questions of sex, age, education, and nationality, push the button marked 3c. Demographics. You can, of course, add your own items to obtain other demographic variables such as religion, income, ethnicity, or whatever. You can add the demographics at any place in the survey, before, in the middle, or after the other items created in step 3.

5. When you have added all the items you want, push the button marked 4. Finish the form. This button will add the finishing HTML to complete the form.

You can now push the 5. Display button to view the form in the browser. You can edit in the window directly, and use the Display button to view the effects of your editing.

6. You can now replace the words "(put your instructions here)" with your instructions. Copy and paste the HTML from the window to a text editor such as NotePad, SimpleText, BBEdit, etc. Save it as text only, with an extension of .htm or .html. For example, you could name it choice_01.htm. It is recommended that you AVOID using a TEXT PROCESSOR (such as MS Word) for this stage, as HTML-aware processors may change your HTML in unintended ways! (AFTER you have saved it as plain vanilla text.

7. Load the file in your browser, test it, and edit its appearance in the text editor to suit your taste. If you plan to have people type short sentences as answers, instead of numerical answers, you should increase the SIZE=8 MAXLENGTH=20 to some larger values; for example, you might use SIZE=60 MAXLENGTH=100 for a brief text answer.

You may want to change the ACTION=URL to your own script.

A script in PERL by William Schmidt that works with surveyWiz can be used to save data to your local server. To see the script and instructions, click here.

The default value of the ACTION address will send the data to a file named, data.csv. file,

8. All files are copyright Michael H. Birnbaum. You are welcome to use the default option under the following conditions. You may freely use the data generated from your own experiment without requesting permission; however, you may not use data from another person's experiment without permission from the author of that experiment, nor may you make any other use of the program or data that would be considered unethical according to the APA code of ethics.

9. Check the data file to make sure that you understand how the variables are placed in the file. One method to identify text boxes is to take the test and give short answers that will identify the item (for example, respond item1 to the first item, item2 to the second, etc.). The variables will be in the order that the items are entered in surveyWiz. The question number, however, does not match the variable number, due to the hidden variables. The first question you add will be the fifth variable in the file, after the four hidden variables of survey name (00exp), date, time, and remote address. If you rearrange the order of the items after creating the HTML, then the data will still return in the original order. You can use this property to create several different random orders of questions, if required in your research topic. All of these rearranged files will return the variables in the original order of the questions. (They are placed in the order of the leading digits on the variable names, specified in the INPUT statements.)

Copyright Michael H. Birnbaum, 1998-2020, all rights reserved. This program may be used freely for educational and other noncommercial scholarly uses. You may copy and modify this program, as long as you copy this copyright notice. If you do use it, please cite the URL and the article by Birnbaum (2000) in works that benefitted from its use. Software is "as is," no guarantees or warranties can be made.

Reference

Return to choiceWiz

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants SBR-9410572, SES-9986436, and BCS-0129453. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.


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July 6, 1999
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