How to Randomize questions that are timed.

Hi ​@adrifriesen, a couple of questions to better understand your problem:

1. When you write “it messes up the timed questions for every other stimuli”, do you mean that the second presentation of a given item (shown with the Likert scale) is messed up? Or that the 2nd, the 4th, the 6th, etc items in the block are messed up but the 1st, 3rd, 5th items look fine?
2. Does “messed up” mean that something visually looks wrong (say, the picture is too small, or is off-center) or that the wrong question is displayed? Or something else?

You said you found a way to display the stimulus + rating scale all as one question, but participants have to scroll down and it might be confusing. If you’d like to use that option, one simple solution is to make the image smaller so that they wouldn’t have to scroll (if that wouldn’t make it too small) - see here for how to do that: https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/survey-module/editing-questions/rich-content-editor/insert-a-graphic/#ImageProperties

Side note, I also first started using Qualtrics for my thesis project (and it sounds like you’re in psychology or something similar), so I know where you’re coming from! Good luck with your thesis!

Hi Jona!

So every other randomized block doesn’t display properly. Specifically, the first image doesn’t display for 10 seconds, it pops up and right away skips to the rating scale. However, all of my timed questions are set up the same, each block is identical except for the image so I’m not sure where i’m going wrong! I have one image per block, so that I can keep track of the time and rating for each image.

I will attach an image of the survey flow just so you have an idea of the randomization. The 6 questions for each block are the 3 timed questions which attach to their corresponding stimuli, rating, or fixation cross questions. And the first set of questions in every other block does not show up properly, it just skips to the rating question.

I did try and make the images smaller, however the matrix scale still appears quite a bit lower no matter how big or small the image is. 

Yes I am in psychology and this is my first time doing any research/a thesis! Thanks so much for your quick response. :)

Hi ​@adrifriesen ! Hmm, interesting. Can you also share a screenshot of the timing question which displays the initial stimulus picture? I want to see what the settings are for the timing and auto-advance. And, can you share a screenshot of the settings for the last question in the block -- so, the final thing that occurs before the survey moves on to the next block and displays the image for too short of a time.

This at least is a great learning experience about how psychology research is a long and bumpy road full of troubleshooting and things you need to figure out! 😁

Actually, one other thought:

You could consider simplifying the design of your experiment a lot by using a Loop & Merge, and only a single block, rather than the block duplicated 26 times, for each stimulus item. The short version of how to do this is as follows (happy to walk you through in more detail if you want to go this route):

1. Upload your pictures to your qualtrics library, and extract the URL that points to them (you can do this by clicking on the gear).
2. Build a Loop & Merge table that consists of 2 columns: (1) the name of your stimulus item in English (trust me, you will want this, and make it column 1), (2) the URL to the picture. You’ll have 26 rows, one for each picture. Click “randomize loop order.”
3. In the block, create the questions as you have them, but instead of inserting each individual image file in the display question and the rating question, insert any of your images as a placeholder, right-click to open up image properties, click on Image Info tab, and in the URL box, write the L&M field (${lm://Field/2} , if your image URLs are in column 2). (You can also adjust height/width here if you want.)
4. Delete all your other blocks, you only need the one and it will pull each image (in a random order) from your L&M table.

You can read more about how L&M works here: https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/survey-module/block-options/loop-and-merge/

And this might solve your problem since it’s now executing literally the identical question for each stimulus.

Hi ​@Jona. I will add the pictures of what each block looks like for you! 

If you think the loop and merge will work after seeing how the blocks are set up then I will give it a try! 

Hi ​@adrifriesen , I don’t see anything that jumps out at me in these screenshots about why every other block should skip the first question, so it’s a bit of a mystery! Try the Loop & Merge idea -- it might solve your problem, and it will also make your experiment a lot cleaner (plus, if you decide you want to change something about the design; say, showing the initial image for 12 seconds instead of 10, you’ll only need to change it on 1 question rather than 26).

Perhaps your first image is too large and takes too long to load.

The timer may have started counting down while the image is loading (if the default image size is large).