Timestamps - who's timezone gets stamped?

[TomH]

Description of the problem:

I ran a couple of studies using Pavlovia and Google Forms and need to compare timestamps from Pavlovia and Google Forms to check participants done what they were supposed to when they were supposed to.

I’m noticing weird things though, whenever I compare just Google forms everything looks fine and whenever I compare just Pavlovia files things also look fine, but when I compare the two weird things happen. I have recruited participants from UK, Canada, US. One of the two isn’t in UK time (where I am) I think.

What does Timestamp actually mean?
Does it give the time for when the participant did the task in their timezone?
Or does it stamp it with the timezone for where the servers are?
Or does is it in when they done it in my time?

Cheers,
Tom

[wakecarter]

I believe that the time in the data file name is GMT

Pavlovia : time stamping problem of the results files

What time zone are you in? 11:51 GMT is 12:51 BST and 13:51 CEST (with users all round the world it makes sense to use GMT for the time stamp)

Duration of Experiments

The csv file has the start time in its title but is last updated at the end (which you can check on Gitlab). For example in this case the data file has 14:08 in its title and 1:23pm when I hover over the time since authorship. You have to think about time zones. Since an experiment can’t start after it finishes, in this case the duration must be 15 minutes. [data time stamps]

[TomH]

Thanks for getting back to me.
*I’m in GMT
*the experiment is finished
*I just need to know how to check what the timestamps are set to, and how to make them GMT if they are not without having to manually convert 1500 files, because my time calculation error seems to only be showing for international participants, so I figure either Pavlovia or Google Form needs adjusting.

Cheers,
Tom