On using E-DataAid: WAS: Converting an Edat file into either a .xls or .txt file

[Cognitology]

Hi,

If you’re not YET doing it, I urge you to have another look at what is
possible with e-DataAid. The reason is that I know many students 1) know
SPSS fairly well, and a bit of Excel, and try to avoid E-***. Not saying
that counts for you as well. Indeed, this is a bit of a shot in the dark,
but with such sentences as “I have a large number of subject edat files
(500+) and I like the column/row format that the Excel export option that
E-DataAid uses so that I can easily convert the data into a format I like
using spss syntax”, it’s difficult to avoid guessing! You might want to say
something about what you’re planning to do, but in its absence, let’s have
an example from my own life, and maybe it helps?

·         What I like is having a good amount of Repeated Measures ANOVA
style formatted columns, say, RTs of 2x4 conditions, one row per subject.
For SPSS. What I have is 500 .edats. Arggh, right?

1.       We merge all files to one big .emrg, which we then open in .edat

2.       We filter out those RTs we are not interested in, say, the ones in
which an error occurs. Also, I don’t like trials 1:20.

3.       Now, we go to analyze, drag Subject to the Row, and any type of
between-subject variable (sex, age, etc). 

4.       Then drag ConditionP1vs2 to columns, drag ConditionQ1vs2vs3vs4 to
columns. Drag the critical RT thing to the Data bit. Press Run.

5.       So, we should see a nice table of at least 500x8. Oops, it’s got
two decimals.. why? Make that 4. Select all of it, copy the bunch to excel.

6.       Inside excel, underneath the two rows with variables (rows A and
B), insert a new row (say C). Enter the wonderful formula =A&”_”&B and drag
it all across row C.

7.       Select row C, copy, go stand in an empty bit, paste special: values
only, and transpose. Copy that, go to SPSS, paste in variables: now, that’s
descriptive indeed. 

8.       Copy all the values over to SPSS (but you’ll have to reassign
string values from numeric for some columns).

 

These 8 steps, lengthy as they may seem, take me about 2 minutes, and I
think it’s a great workflow. 

TLDR? Try E-DataAid, it’s ridiculously simple, really rocks, and SPSS is
best avoided as they make it slower and buggier with every next release. 

 

PS: Paul, I find Excel not at all slow with large data-files? Much faster
than SPSS, at least, or at least it has been between excel 2007 and 2010
(2013 beta was running very slow here); it does not cope very well with
large and lengthy formulas that need repeated recalculation and take up more
than hundreds of MBs, though. 

 

Best,

Michiel

 

 

From: e-prime at googlegroups.com [mailto:e-prime at googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Daniel
Sent: 11. February 2013 23:02
To: e-prime at googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Converting an Edat file into either a .xls or .txt file

 

Yeah, I will probably just end up splitting it using a SPSS syntax script (I
am not very familiar with Matlab yet), it will be a little bit tedious but
faster than doing it manually.

 

Thanks for the input.

On Friday, February 8, 2013 6:49:09 PM UTC-5, Daniel wrote:

I have a large number of subject edat files (500+) and I like the column/row
format that the Excel export option that E-DataAid uses so that I can easily
convert the data into a format I like using spss syntax. Is there a faster
way to convert all of these subject files into the excel format, some sort
of way to iterate over all files in a folder, instead of having to open each
one and export them separately?

 

Thanks.

 

 

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