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For the problem solvers

I will be starting my dissertation this coming academic year and couldn't get my head around something which I'm hoping someone could help me with.

For my study, I would have 30 participants. Taking away the time for questionnaires and briefing, each participant has 30 minutes spare to watch videos. These videos take 6 minutes each and there are 10 videos.

If I were to make each participant watch every video, this would mean they would be spending 60 minutes and I do not have this time to allocate, nor do I think many would be willing to watch videos for that long -not ethically sound.

I was hoping to figure out how to have each participant watch 5 videos each- randomised but so that each video is watched an equal amount of times overall. How would I go about doing this? I am not sure if something already exists or if the answer is quite simple but I am at a blank.

So 30 participants who would watch 5/10 videos each. And each video is watched an equal number of times. I understand I could just split the videos in half, so the same 5 videos are shown to 15 participants and the other 5 videos to the last 15 participants. I am wondering if this would be acceptable, I thought if each participants had a random set of videos, different to each other participants, this would be more reliable and account for any personal bias etc. This is a BSc Psychology dissertation if that helps at all.

I'm hoping this all makes sense and some genius out there can save me a lot of time and headaches.

Thanks for your time
One way of doing it would be to first find how many minutes the participants watch videos all together which is 30*30 = 900 minutes. Then divide 900/6 to get the number of videos watched all together = 150 videos. Divide the number of videos by the number of type of videos which is 150/10 = 15 so now you have how many of each video the participants watch all together. So now you have 15 of each video just randomly divide them between each participant making sure you don't give the same video to the participant. Hope that helps :smile:
More information would help: what is the hypothesis and statistical analysis you plan? Is this being done in person or online?

Why is 60 minutes' not an option? I can't think of an obvious ethical reason.

You can definitely randomise the presentation of videos so each person sees a randomly selected five. This would be better than just splitting the vids into two groups for the reasons you suggest.

You can randomise with software like e-prime or OpenSesame. I think even Qualtrics can do it online. Bear in mind you might have statistical issues e.g. some ratings across videos will not be independent and there may be a risk of pseudoreplication (but that depends on what analysis you want to do). You can even randomise videos by drawing papers out of a hat. If you do this "without replacement" you can ensure each video is viewed the same number of times.
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Aiviloblue
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Original post by chazwomaq
More information would help: what is the hypothesis and statistical analysis you plan? Is this being done in person or online?

Why is 60 minutes' not an option? I can't think of an obvious ethical reason.

You can definitely randomise the presentation of videos so each person sees a randomly selected five. This would be better than just splitting the vids into two groups for the reasons you suggest.

You can randomise with software like e-prime or OpenSesame. I think even Qualtrics can do it online. Bear in mind you might have statistical issues e.g. some ratings across videos will not be independent and there may be a risk of pseudoreplication (but that depends on what analysis you want to do). You can even randomise videos by drawing papers out of a hat. If you do this "without replacement" you can ensure each video is viewed the same number of times.


I am looking at perceived perception of personality through online avatars-if that makes sense? But instead of just images, I wanted them to carry out a few tasks in game- which would be the videos.

As for time allocation, we are only allowed 30 person hours. hence my issue. I have only mentioned the 30 who would be carrying out the perceived personality tasks, there are further participants who create avatars and play using them but have already worked out time allocation for them.

Maybe i'm jumping the gun, I have heard of OpenSesame and qualtrics and I know I will be introduced to them in my final year, so if you suggests they would be a solution, then maybe the answer is just patience.

I;m thinking this research would be better suited to a masters or PhD but I am looking to do a computer science related masters and hence will not get the opportunity, so I'm just figuring out how to make it work for me.

Thanks for your suggestions:smile:
I think your issues will be statistical rather than practical. It's very easy to randomise a subset of items across participants. Or you could ensure that each participant sees only one video. It all depends on what your unit of analysis is going to be.

I would probably need details of the research design to give you full advice (and I wouldn't read that!).

Do you have a tutor? She should be able to help with your design.

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