FormComponent¶

The Form component enables Psychopy to be used as a questionnaire tool, where participants can be presented with a series of questions requiring responses. Form items, defined as questions and response pairs, are presented simultaneously onscreen with a scrollable viewing window.

Note: We have now introduced Pavlovia Surveys which allow you to create online questionnaires. You can either use them by themselves or in conjunction with your experiments. Click here to watch our Pavlovia Surveys Launch Webinar to find out more.

Note: Since this is still in beta, keep an eye out for bug fixes.

Parameters¶

Basic¶

Name

Everything in a PsychoPy^® experiment needs a unique name. The name should contain only letters, numbers and underscores (no punctuation marks or spaces).

Start

The time that the stimulus should first appear.

Stop

Governs the duration for which the stimulus is presented.

ItemsA csv / xlsx file To get started, we recommend selecting the “Open/Create Icon” which will open up a template forms spreadsheet A csv/xlsx file should have the following key, value pairs / column headers:

index: The item index as a number
itemText: The item question string
itemWidth: The question width between 0 : 1
type: The type of rating e.g., ‘choice’, ‘rating’, ‘slider’, ‘free-text’
responseWidth: The question width between 0 : 1
options: A sequence of tick labels for options e.g., yes, no
layout: Response object layout e.g., ‘horiz’ or ‘vert’
itemColor: The question text font color
responseColor: The response object color
granularity: If you are using a slider, what do you want the granularity of the slider to be?

Missing column headers will be replaced by default entries, with the exception of itemText and type, which are required. The default entries are:

index: 0 (increments for each item)
itemWidth: 0.7
responseWidth: 0.3
options: Yes, No
layout: horiz
itemColor: from style
responseColor: from style

Data format

Choose whether to store items data by column or row in your datafile.

Randomize

Randomize order of Form elements

Layout¶

How should the stimulus be laid out? Padding, margins, size, position, etc.

Size [w,h]: Size of the stimulus, to be specified in ‘height’ units.
Position [x,y]: The position of the centre of the stimulus, to be specified in ‘height’ units.
Item padding: Space or padding between Form elements (i.e., question and response text), to be specified in ‘height’ units.

Appearance¶

How should the stimulus look? Color, borders, etc. Many of these read-only parameters become editable when Styles is set to custom.

Styles

Whether to style items in your form for a light or a dark background

Fill color

Color of the form’s background See Color spaces

Border color

Color of the outline around the form See Color spaces

Item color

Base text color for questions See Color spaces

Response color

Base text color for responses, also sets color of lines in sliders and borders of textboxes See Color spaces

Marker color

Color of markers and the scrollbar See Color spaces

Color space

In what format (color space) have you specified the colors? (rgb, dkl, lms, hsv) See Color spaces

Options: - rgb - dkl - lms - hsv

Opacity

Vary the transparency, from 0.0 = invisible to 1.0 = opaque

Formatting¶

Formatting text

Text height: Text height of the Form elements (i.e., question and response text).
Font: Font to use in text.

Note

Top tip: Form has an attribute to check if all questions have been answered form.complete. You could use this to make a “submit” button appear only when the form is completed!