display highest previously ranked stimulus

[cww3]

In this study, participants rate a list of adjectives on a numerical scale. I need to display the highest rated adjective in future questions. For example, if athletic is 5, kind is 3, and smart is 2, I'd like to be able to ask, "How do you feel when you think about being athletic?" and a few other questions using the word athletic. I saw a previous thread that said this was possible using advanced features in medialab. If that's true, what would be the correct syntax for the conditional statements in Excel? Thanks!

[jarvis24]

You would need to list the ranking item's variable names (e.g., rank_01, rank_02, etc.) in the responses.xls file. The create a new variable called something like highest. Then in the syntax for that variable's value you would create the conditional logic that determines which of the ranking variables has a value of "1". This would be done with the Excel "If" function. Something like:

=IF(B2=1,"option1",IF(B3=1,"option2",IF(B4=1,"option3",IF(B5=1,"option4",0))))

I put this in a sample xls file so you can see how it works. You can change the values in the second column around and see the impact it has on the "highest" variable. Then you can simply insert <highest> into your subsequent question wordings.

[cww3]

Thank you!! Can this also be done in DirectRT? And is this doable in 2006 too or only the 2008 version?

[jarvis24]

MediaLab v2006 and later can do this. DirectRT, at least as of v2008 and prior, can not.