Coordination with SONA?

[danieljwilson]

I was wondering if there might be some sort of "nice" way to use ExpFactory with SONA?

From the SONA documentation:

Is there any way we could link the id/%USER_CODE% to the user token?

Basically I am hoping for two things:

1. Users automatically taken to the correct URL that is connected to their Experiment Factory token
2. Users' SONA IDs associated in some way with their token id for cross referencing and assigning credits

[vsoch]

What is SONA?

If it's an external tool, my thinking is that you could design a battery where that is the last experiment, and then if we provide the token in the page for you to use, you could issue the redirect. You could also just provide them two links from the getgo, and send the second one when they finish the first.

[paulsharpeY]

https://www.sona-systems.com/

Popular with UK universities.

[danieljwilson]

Sorry for not providing more detail - it is a participant management system. I think quite a few schools in Canada/US also use it - and they have a number of integrations with various experiment/survey platforms...(see page 56)...

I am thinking about your suggestions but not sure I completely follow yet. But I guess I could just have the first/final experiment be having them enter their SONA ID and then using that to match later...

[vsoch]

Off the top of my head, what I'd try first is creating an "ending" experiment and then try to parse the session data into javascript, send a post to the server to finish, and then redirect to the SONA url. Here is what I found to load the session data. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16312831/how-to-read-flask-sessions-using-javascript

Then if you package that into an expactory experiment, anyone can install for their use!

[danieljwilson]

Unfortunately I don't really have any experience with javascript/flask so I am hesitant to start down that path (even though it seems interesting - just trying to keep focussed on the research goals atm).

I have created a new survey that just essentially asks the participant to input their SONA ID. This is a bit of a bodge but it has the benefit of being quick/simple.

The only thing is that I would like to have this survey always run FIRST, and then all of the other surveys/tasks run after in random order. However, in the documentation it looks like it is either all random or all ordered? Just wanted to double check that I am not missing something? Thanks!!

[vsoch]

Unfortunately I don't really have any experience with javascript/flask so I am hesitant to start down that path (even though it seems interesting - just trying to keep focussed on the research goals atm).

Sure that's fair! As a JavaScript novice myself I don't think it would be hard to try, fwiw.

The only thing is that I would like to have this survey always run FIRST, and then all of the other surveys/tasks run after in random order. However, in the documentation it looks like it is either all random or all ordered? Just wanted to double check that I am not missing something? Thanks!!

Yes that's correct! Nobody has asked for just first/last so it hasn't been implemented. If this would be useful for you I can put some time in this evening, and we would do something like:

export EXPFACTORY_EXPERIMENT_FIRST=experiment-you-want-first
export EXPFACTORY_EXPERIMENT_LAST=experiment-you-want-last

And it would throw an error if an experiment isn't found, or if first == last and there are > 1 experiment. How does that sound? I can put in some time this evening to work on it, unless you beat me to it.

[vsoch]

okay here you go!

#162

It's really early here and I need to go back to sleep, but I tired to put something in quickly so you can test. Try updating your dockerfile to build from this branch, add the specification of the first and or last envars, and please report any bugs / issues on the PR (and I can get to them along with finishing up docs tonight). #162. Need to go back to sleep for a bit before the workday :)

[danieljwilson]

Oh wow! I can't believe how quick you are! Will try this.
🙏