Discussion: What to do with partial data when a participant quits?

[wakecarter]

Here’s the thread where I discovered that pressing the escape key was sometimes being recommended as the correct way to end an experiment:

Pavlovia sessions showing as aborted and not completed

URL of experiment: https://run.pavlovia.org/sjcauffman/experiment1/html Description of the problem: I have been testing my experiment before putting it up on MTurk and whenever I get to the end of my study, I press the escape key to end the session and save the data. However, while this does save the data, it also doesnt show my session as having been completed. Do I need to add a key press to the final routine so that the session completes itself?

It makes perfect sense locally. You have a thank you message in your final routine with no method to continue so you can say goodbye to the participant without them seeing the PsychoPy builder window. Then you press escape and restart for the next participant. I think it’s a bad habit that has been learned by users of PsychoPy since data is saved as you go, so there is no difference between pressing escape or ending the final routine on a key press or time out. The bad habits of existing PsychoPy users need to be taken into account in this issue.

I also think that this post should be added to the current discussion

Data loss with closed tab

I believe that this post didn’t receive nearly as much attention as it should have. I know that it might be tricky to make this happen, but it would be really useful to have a fail-safe in online experiments that would allow a researcher not to lose participant’s data if he or she accidentally closes the window/tab before the experiment ends naturally (either by pressing Esc or some other key). I am writing this because I just lost a very useful chunk of data purely accidentally. Now, @jon men…