How to add open- and multiple choice questions to your experiment in OpenSesame

When programming an experiment, you may want to use different types of questions. This can be a multiple choice question, open question, rating scale, etc. 

To add questions, you need a loop and a sequence. To add these elements, you click on 'experiment' in your overview. Now all the elements of your experiments will be visible. Add your loop and sequence by clicking on the '+' button. When you did this, you must add your sequence to your loop. Do this by dragging the sequence onto the loop element in your overview, and choose the option ' insert into new loop'. 

Now you have a loop that repeats your sequence for you. Now it's time to add your questions. Click on your sequence in the overview. On the screen that appears, you will be able to add elements to your sequence by clicking the '+' button. In this blog I will use two question types as an example: the open question and the multiple choice question.

Open question:

Add your open question element by clicking on the '+', and choose 'append new item' and 'form_text_input'. Now your open question will appear in the overview. Click on it in the overview to edit your question. 

To edit the text your participant sees, edit 'form title'. You can use this as an instruction for your participant. An example for this is 'Click enter when you have given your answer'. 

There are two ways you can edit your question:

1. Change 'Your question' to the question you want to ask. Use this method when you only have one open question.
2. When you have multiple open questions, it is smart to make a variable for this in your loop. First add a variable name to the table in your loop, for example 'question'. Now add in your questions underneath. Go back to your open question form and change 'Your question' to [question]. OpenSesame reads everything between [ ] as a variable (this is sensitive for capital letters!). Now you programmed the open question form to show the questions you added to your loop!

Multiple choice questions:

To add a multiple choice form, click on the '+' in the sequence, and choose 'append new item' and 'form_multiple_choice'. Edit it by clicking the element in the overview. Choose a form title, such as 'Pick an answer', and a button text, such as 'Ok'. 

To add your question, add in your variable [question] again. OpenSesame reads everything between [ ] as a variable (this is sensitive for capital letters!).

Add your anwer options to the second box. Seperate the different options by using enter. 

Now you added your multiple choice question and its answer options!

If you have trouble selectively running your questions (meaning: only showing specific questions in a specific question form; openquestions in the openquestion-form, multiple choice questions in the multiple choice question-form, etc.). Check out my blog on how to fix this!

Questions? Let me know in the contribution section!

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