Description of the problem: I had a participant complete my task on 10/27 which is reflected on the session summary on my experiment dashboard (says last session: 2020-10-27 22:07:36). I have the “save incomplete results” also selected. However, I do not see this participant’s csv file in my data files. For a while (about 24 hours) after the session, I noticed one pavlovia credit was “reserved”. I didn’t release the credit or do anything but now it says 0 credits reserved. Not sure if that is related to the problem. Is there any way to recover the datafile from 10/27?
The summary on your dashboard should update based on when the link to your experiment was clicked. However the data files are saved at a different point. When your participant finishes the experiment they will see a yellow box warning them to wait a moment as the data saves this will be followed by a green box that reads something like ‘thank you for your patience’.
If the data are not saved this could mean a number of things:
the participant closed the tab the experiment was running in before the data could be saved (but in cases like this, a warning message is presented that reads ‘unsaved data may be lost are you sure you want to leave’ - so unless your participant pressed yes, this is unlikely)
your participant closed the whole browser before the data could be saved.
internet connection cut out at the point where the data were sent back to pavlovia.
Perhaps you could check in with your participant if they saw the yellow ‘data saving’ warning message, followed by a green thankyou message? if they saw the former but not the later it could mean the window was closed prematurely.
Thanks for the explanation. I was with the participant on Zoom throughout the study so I can probably rule out #3 (and probably #1 too). I will be sure to tell participants in the future to not close the window prematurely.
I am a little confused about the option to save incomplete results though. I thought by selecting this option, data would be saved even if the experiment was ended prematurely. Is that not the case?
If the experiment is ended prematurely, and you have the “save incomplete results” selected this still relies on the participant giving enough time for the data to be sent back to pavlovia. If they press escape before the experiment ends, they should still see the little yellow debrief box, but if they close their browser, that is unfortunately outside the relm of what we can control, and may stop the data being saved correctly. I think your suggestion of just emphasising to them to wait untill they see that yellow box turn to a green “thank you” is the best recommendation.
Of course, it is still very frustrating to have lost a dataset, but hopefully this will prevent this happening again and make the “incomplete data” option a bit clearer.
Dear Becca,
Is there any method that we can use to customize the message “Thank you for your patience”.
I would like to change this message as something else.
Please let me know.
Many thanks,
Sumathi.
If you take a look at the compiled .JS file in a text editor you will se the last thing called is PsychoJS.quit and that this has the variable ‘message’ - I think that is the variable you would want to change although I haven’t personally done this myself.
What I would recommend (rather than editing the .js file itself) is try adding a custom JS code component to the last routine in your experiment and in the ‘end routine’ tab call the psychoJS.quit (in the same way you see it being called in your .js file). From there see if you can manipulate the value of ‘message’
I have recently had a similar problem where it says: last session: 2022-04-18 23:27:52 and we did run a participant in this (30min) task tonight, they did the entire task… We were on zoom with them and nothing ever cut out. We told them to wait for it to save but anything is possible when we didn’t see it actually save.
But when I download the data folder, there is no file from today’s date what so ever. Why wouldn’t it save incomplete results? Is the data lost forever? This is the second time this happened this month with this task
