survey-text¶

Current version: 1.1.3. See version history.

The survey-text plugin displays a set of questions with free response text fields. The participant types in answers.

Parameters¶

In addition to the parameters available in all plugins, this plugin accepts the following parameters. Parameters with a default value of undefined must be specified. Other parameters can be left unspecified if the default value is acceptable.

Parameter	Type	Default Value	Description
questions	array	undefined	An array of objects, each object represents a question that appears on the screen. Each object contains a prompt, placeholder, required, rows, and columns parameter that will be applied to the question. See examples below for further clarification. `prompt`: Type string, default value of undefined. The string is the prompt for the participant to respond to. Each question gets its own response field. `placeholder`: Type string, default value of `""`. The string will create placeholder text in the text field. `required`: Boolean; if `true` then the user must enter a response to submit. `rows`: Type integer, default value of 1. The number of rows for the response text box. `columns`: Type integer, default value of 40. The number of columns for the response text box. `name`: Name of the question. Used for storing data. If left undefined then default names (`Q0`, `Q1`, `...`) will be used for the questions.
randomize_question_order	boolean	`false`	If true, the display order of `questions` is randomly determined at the start of the trial. In the data object, `Q0` will still refer to the first question in the array, regardless of where it was presented visually.
preamble	string	empty string	HTML formatted string to display at the top of the page above all the questions.
button_label	string	'Continue'	The text that appears on the button to finish the trial.
autocomplete	boolean	false	This determines whether or not all of the input elements on the page should allow autocomplete. Setting this to true will enable autocomplete or auto-fill for the form.

Data Generated¶

In addition to the default data collected by all plugins, this plugin collects the following data for each trial.

Name	Type	Value
response	object	An object containing the response for each question. The object will have a separate key (variable) for each question, with the first question in the trial being recorded in `Q0`, the second in `Q1`, and so on. For each question, the response is a string containing whatever text was in the response box when the responses were submitted. If the `name` parameter is defined for the question, then the response object will use the value of `name` as the key for each question. This will be encoded as a JSON string when data is saved using the `.json()` or `.csv()` functions.
rt	numeric	The response time in milliseconds for the participant to make a response. The time is measured from when the questions first appear on the screen until the participant's response(s) were submitted.
question_order	array	An array with the order of questions. For example `[2,0,1]` would indicate that the first question was `trial.questions[2]` (the third item in the `questions` parameter), the second question was `trial.questions[0]`, and the final question was `trial.questions[1]`. This will be encoded as a JSON string when data is saved using the `.json()` or `.csv()` functions.

Install¶

Using the CDN-hosted JavaScript file:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/@jspsych/plugin-survey-text@1.1.3"></script>

Using the JavaScript file downloaded from a GitHub release dist archive:

<script src="jspsych/plugin-survey-text.js"></script>

Using NPM:

npm install @jspsych/plugin-survey-text

import surveyText from '@jspsych/plugin-survey-text';

Examples¶

Single question and response

CodeDemo

var trial = {
  type: jsPsychSurveyText,
  questions: [
    {prompt: 'How old are you?'}
  ]
}

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Multiple questions, with an optional placeholder and a required question

CodeDemo

var trial = {
  type: jsPsychSurveyText,
  questions: [
    {prompt: 'What is your date of birth?', placeholder: 'mm/dd/yyyy', required: true},
    {prompt: 'What country do you currently live in?'}
  ]
}

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Naming questions to improve readability of the stored data

CodeDemo

var trial = {
  type: jsPsychSurveyText,
  questions: [
    {prompt: 'What did you eat for breakfast?', name: 'Breakfast'},
    {prompt: 'What did you eat for lunch?', name: 'Lunch'}
  ]
}

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Using the preamble and a longer textbox response

CodeDemo

var trial = {
  type: jsPsychSurveyText,
  preamble: `<img src="img/navarro_burst_03.jpg" style="width:400px;"></img>`,
  questions: [
    {prompt: 'Describe your reaction to the image above', rows: 5}
  ]
}

The artwork in this demo is by Danielle Navarro

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