recording answers for fill in the blank without the enter key (case 21436)

[mkclairhong]

Hi all,

I have a questionnaire in which the participants are given 8 seconds to complete the cued word (file attached below). I am not allowing the participants to move on until the 8 seconds have passed in order to make sure that no one races through the item. I achieved doing so by disabling the enter key from the computer. However, with the fill-in-the-blank items, the responses that are typed without the enter key are recorded as 99. I see that some people in the past had the same problem and Jason suggested using custom items (http://www.empirisoft.com/medialab/help/custom_items.htm).
I can't quite understand how I can use the custom items for my experiment, and I was wondering if there has been any new solution since the thread was created.

Please let me know and thank you so much for your help!!

Thanks,
Clair

[jason_reed]

How did you disable the enter key?

[mkclairhong]

I used the method introduced in this post:
http://www.empirisoft.com/support/showthread.php/3233-Disable-quot-Enter-quot-Key?highlight=Enter+key

Would there be any other way to disable the enter key so that the data will be encoded without the "enter"?

Thank you so much for your help as always-- I truly appreciate it!

Best,
Clair

[jason_reed]

If you actually want to completely disable the Enter key, the way that you linked to is the only one to use with the current versions of MediaLab.

Could you please elaborate on exactly what is confusing you about the use of Custom items in MediaLab? Did you take a look at the explanation and examples of Custom items in the MediaLab manual here: http://www.empirisoft.com/medialab/help/custom_items.htm