Hi, I coded a little online-applet to allow for controlled/determinisitc counterbalancing for pavlovia experiments. That is, it allows you to get exactly as many participants in a between-subjects factor level as you specify, which is helpful if pure randomization is not sufficient (e.g., when having a lot of different groups and a small sample or when having significantly different drop-out rates across the conditions). It’s basically an alternative to the VESPR-Study portal with less functionality but easier and faster to set up. You may try it on my shinyapps.io page. However, since there is a usage time limit for a free account there, which may be exceeded if many people use it, you may want to get it from my github page and upload it to your own shinyapps.io account.
Thanks for putting the work forward! I am currently creating an online study and this seems to be exactly what I am looking for to be able to counterbalance participants across groups. I went on your ‘try it’ link but unfortunately when I entered the URL it created it always gave me a 404 error message. I entered my researcher name, name of the study and set the study to running on pavlovia, but maybe I missed a step? I’m also still somewhat confused about how to implement it myself as I have never used shinyapps.io before. And I am wondering about privacy, is there a risk that the app will track information about my participants that could be a privacy risk? Sorry for the many questions!
Hi Roxane, could you post both the URL of your experiment and the URL that PavloviaSwitch redirects you to (the one that gives an 404)? Maybe I can tell you where the problem is with these infos.
With regards to privacy, the app itself does not track any unnecessary information. However, I won’t make any claims about the privacy concerning shinyapps.io itself. They give some details here: Chapter 8 Security and Compliance | shinyapps.io user guide. To have 100% control over the privacy settings, you would have to host the app on your own server, which is of course much more complicated.
Hi! Thanks for your reply I managed to get the counterbalancing working with an alternate solution in the end. As an update though if you’re interested I tried the switch again to answer your question and this time instead of directing me to a 404 error it just disconnects from the server as soon as I press submit.
I managed to get the counterbalancing working with an alternate solution in the end. As an update though if you’re interested I tried the switch again to answer your question and this time instead of directing me to a 404 error it just disconnects from the server as soon as I press submit.