Hide"Continue" button when participants take a web-based questionnaire (case 5747)

I am setting up an experiment to run in MediaLab where I want participants to be directed to a website where some additional questionnaires are administered, before they are brought back into the MediaLab environment. I have so far been able to set this up effectively, however I am wondering if there is a way that the "Continue" button can be removed from the bottom right corner of the screen while the participants complete these (web-based) questionnaires. I know that one way would be to set a limit on the response time (using the duration parameter I think it is), however doing this really doesn't suit my needs and makes the running of the study more complicated. Adapting the web-based questionnaires to be administered within MediaLab is also not an option.


Do you have any ideas of how I can eliminate the "Continue" button from the screen until participants have completed all of the web-based items? I am using the 2006 version of MediLab (I think it is).a


Thank you for any suggestions that you can provide.


David

You can do this in v2008 and v2010--not sure if it was implemented in v2006. Could be worth checking the version histories.

You present your same html pages as custom items rather than html items. That way you won't automatically get the continue button. That is simply a matter of selecting "Custom Item" for the items you already have marked as "HTML" items.

The trick with using regular HTML under the guide of a custom item is using a password. Add a password parameter to the item such as "cat"--this would look like (xcat) in the parameters field. The trick here is that if you know of or can create a posted variable named "cat" in the HTML, then the custom item will end at that point. One easy way to do this is to find out what variable names are posted on the last HTML page your subjects will see or submit. Enter one of those values as a password and you're good to go.

For example, try using [URL="http://www.empirisoftosft.com"]www.empirisoft.com[/URL] as a custom item by entering that in the filename field. Then enter [I](xindex)[/I] in the parameters field. You'll find that MediaLab will cut out of the custom item if you click on any of the navigation links at the top because they all post a variable named "index".

Hope that helps.

Thanks for that. That was very helpful.

Berled

I need to do this exact same thing. However, my knowledge of HTML is lacking ... I am using Qualtrics, a survey building program which allows me to avoid any sort of HTML programming, but I know that I can insert my own HTML if I want to. If you don't mind, what would the code be for a variable that would function as a parameter in MediaLab? Thanks!

Hello,
I am dealing with a similar problem. I could make MediaLab launch the the external webpage (Qualtrics), but only the first page of the survey appears and cannot progress to the rest of the study.
Have you had the same difficulty and if yes could you solve that?
Thanks,
Peter

Hi-
I haven't had the exact same problem, but I do know how to have MediaLab incorporate a survey programed in Qualtrics. However, I'm not sure I can diagnose the problem without seeing the file. What version of MediaLab are you using?

Chris

Hi Chris,
Thanks. I am using the 2006 version. Now it seems I solved the problem with little tricks and with using "executable", but if there is a general solution it would be good to know for the future. With using the "HTML" type I can open up the webpages, except, unfortunately, the one I need, which is a Qulatrics survey. The instructions to hide the continue button I found in the user guides did not work well. And with using the webpage that I want to pull up as an "HTML", medialab never let me progress in the survey that I opened up, but only showed the first page.
Peter

Hi, in case it's still relevant, I've posted an example of how I've embedded a Qualtrics survey within an HTML file and used a MediaLab Custom Item to hide the continue button and use a password to allow the subject to continue. This particular example allows you to put a medialab experiment in the middle of a Qualtrics survey, but you could configure it however you want (Qualtrics first, Qualtrics second, etc).

You can substitute any external URL into the HTML iframe code (q1.html) to make this work. It doesn't have to be a Qualtrics survey.

[URL]http://support.empirisoft.com/showthread.php?t=5646[/URL]

- Lillian