Exit Rank Items without finishing and saving ranked and unranked items.

[ancadranca]

Hi
In my task, I need participants to be able to exit the ranking task without finishing it. Furthermore, later on, I would need them to be able to view it again, but with their answers, that is with items both ranked and unrankes.
Can I do this in MediaLab, V2008. If so, how?
Thank you!
Anca

[jarvis24]

You can allow early exit from most item types by having the participant (or the experimenter) press ctrl+right arrow. This basically skips the question though and won't save the data for the item if the subject were to return to it later. As far as I can think of, off the top of my head, I don't see an easy way to do this short of creating a custom item that saves the info via cookies. That way the same custom item could be administered later on with the prior responses in tact. Like I said though--not easy. If you'd like to pursue that direction let me know and I'd be happy to help. I know of at least one online ranking web page that lets you move the items around in a manner similar to MediaLab. With a little work (by you or a java/java script programmer), you might be able to modify the source code to your needs.

Note that this issue is very much related to an older issue/feature request for MediaLab to be able to save partial and complete data to allow for ease of movement back and forth through a questionnaire. If I'd thought of this when I first wrote MediaLab it wouldn't have been a big deal. But because of the way I structured the program, it will be a hefty overhaul to accomplish this as a standard feature.