URGENT help needed! : Object amount limit?

[David McFarlane]

Mich,

Um, judging from your (26*26 + 26) formula, and 
Excel using letters (plus double- and now even 
triple-letters) to label columns, I gather that 
you mean "colums" where you say "rows".

Cheers,
-- David McFarlane, Professional Faultfinder


>I see you beat me to it! Just to add to this: 
>Excel pre 2007 could handle up to 702 rows 
>(26*26 + 26), after 2007, they showed some sign 
>of listening to customers misusing it by 
>changing that to something like 18304 (26*26*26 + 26*26 + 26).
>
>...No, that's not 18304 row-objects!
>Cheers,
>Mich
>
>
>Michiel Spapé
>Research Fellow
>Perception & Action group
>University of Nottingham
>School of Psychology
>www.cognitology.eu
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: e-prime at googlegroups.com 
>[mailto:e-prime at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David McFarlane
>Sent: 27 August 2010 15:40
>To: e-prime at googlegroups.com; E-Prime
>Subject: Re: URGENT help needed! : Object amount limit?
>
>dpschpak wrote:
> >I had previously made separate experiments for each
> >questionnaire, but given that the output would vary in number of rows
> >and such, she decided that it would be easier to transfer into SAS if
> >each question were it's own object
>
>OK folks, here's the problem -- you are all (dpschpak, your
>professor, and liwenna) grossly misusing the term "object" in this
>context.  I understood this only because of Michiel's reply, he got
>it right.  E-Prime employs an *object*-oriented design.  In this
>context "object" has a very precise technical meaning, and you should
>all learn to use that term correctly just as you would any other
>scientific or technical term.  You cannot just throw that term around
>loosely and expect people to understand what you mean.
>
>Your professor, reasonably enough, most likely means merely that she
>wants each question to appear in some loose sense as its own
>"item".  Now, if you do things in the ordinary EP way as Mich and liw
>advise then you will have one, say, TextDisplay "object" that you use
>repeatedly with differing text on each "trial", and the response for
>each trial will then appear as a separate row in the .edat
>file.  Then once you train yourself on E-Merge and E-DataAid (you
>*will* work faithfully through all the manuals and not overlook the
>wonderful data handling facilities of EP, won't you?) you can slice
>and dice and recombine and analyze the congregate six ways to Sunday,
>and if that is still not enough write some macros in Excel or Python
>or what have you, and from there bring it into SAS.
>
> >, therefore one row of data in the output file.
>
>Ah, but mayhaps your professor wants your output to look more like
>what you get from tools like MediaLab, where you end up with data
>from all the subject in one big table, one column for each "item"
>(>1000 columns in your case, I don't think even Excel can handle
>that!) and one row for each subject.  Given what you can do with
>E-Merge and E-DataAid that is a completely silly way to do things in
>EP, but I can see that if your prof wanted that outcome then it would
>be natural to ask for each "item" to be a separate "object" just so
>that each response went into a column with a unique name.  But even
>for such silliness you would not need >1000 objects.  You could
>accomplish the same thing with a single object and a little bit of
>inline code, e.g.,
>
>g_itemCount = g_itemCount + 1
>c.SetAttrib "Item" & g_itemCount, StimText.RESP
>
>(you would of course have to declare g_itemCount as a global variable
>in the User Script area, see chapter 4 of the User's Guide that came
>with EP).  ...  oops, on further thought, even though this tactic
>would create a unique column for each "item", it would would still
>create more than a single row in your .edat file (and leave a bunch
>of "NULL" entries), but you get the idea.
>
>But really, if you are going to use any tool, such as EP, then you
>should adapt to use the tool in its natural way or else get a tool
>already more to your liking.  Otherwise, you are just using a
>screwdriver for a hammer.
>
> >  The response methods differ between and within these
> >questionnaires. Some are Yes/No, some ask for the subject to select a
> >number or letter corresponding to their answer, some questions ask for
> >typed out answers.
>
>OK, so you may need different "objects" for different *kinds* of
>question/response, but if you think through the design properly then
>that number should still remain small.  Once again, please work
>through *all* the tutorials in the manuals before you start any work
>in EP, you are not doing anyone any favors by jumping in with both
>feet before you can swim.
>
> >On a side note, EPrime is a program that is supplied to us through our
> >department for free, which may also be why she choose to use it for
> >this reason.
>
>Arrgh!  I HATE it when people choose a tool just because it is
>"free"!!!  What are we, Neandertals?!  Choose a tool because it is
>the proper tool for the job, for goodness sakes, and let cost act as
>merely a tie-breaker among otherwise equivalent tools.
>
> >  What other programs would be better suited for this purpose?
>
>AFAIK the preeminent tool for lab-based computerized social and
>psychology questionnaires is the aforementioned MediaLab, from
>Empirisoft (www.empirisoft.com ).  I don't think it's very expensive,
>and they have a very liberal policy toward site licenses to boot, we
>use it here.  Beyond that, I would try any modern database management
>system (e.g., MS Access), which is really meant for this sort of
>thing.  With a little more daring and cleverness you could do this
>all directly in JavaScript and run it from any web browser (and by
>mixing in a little ActiveX and runing on MS Internet Explorer even
>have it save data directly to disk), which would give you some
>practice in a widely used technology and also be, well, free.
>
>-- David McFarlane, Professional Faultfinder

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