Hi Folks,
We have an update on this. We have recently (made effective this past Saturday) improved the mechanisms of conditional branching. First of all, please allow me to explain why conditional branching was a bit unreliable.
Conditional branching, by definition, means that upcoming study content needs to be retrieved dynamically based on participants' past responses. This means that at the point of branching, the browser needs to make a trip back to the server to retrieve additional content. This is the point of failure, as a tiny network hiccup would interfere with the retrieval process.
We have now since made two improvements. The first one is visual, in the area of user experience: when the retrieval process is happening, FF now displays a message "Retrieving additional study content..." with a spinning wheel. This will hopefully make participants wait patiently for the upcoming study content. Second is the underlying retrieval mechanism: the retrieval of study content now retries up to 10 times. Before this update, the retrieval happened exactly once, and thus had no tolerance of network failure at all. Under the new setup, it'd be much more robust, although occasionally, it'll take a little bit of waiting on the part of participants.
Please keep us updated on whether this makes a difference in your studies. We are eager to hear more feedback. Thanks!
We have an update on this. We have recently (made effective this past Saturday) improved the mechanisms of conditional branching. First of all, please allow me to explain why conditional branching was a bit unreliable.
Conditional branching, by definition, means that upcoming study content needs to be retrieved dynamically based on participants' past responses. This means that at the point of branching, the browser needs to make a trip back to the server to retrieve additional content. This is the point of failure, as a tiny network hiccup would interfere with the retrieval process.
We have now since made two improvements. The first one is visual, in the area of user experience: when the retrieval process is happening, FF now displays a message "Retrieving additional study content..." with a spinning wheel. This will hopefully make participants wait patiently for the upcoming study content. Second is the underlying retrieval mechanism: the retrieval of study content now retries up to 10 times. Before this update, the retrieval happened exactly once, and thus had no tolerance of network failure at all. Under the new setup, it'd be much more robust, although occasionally, it'll take a little bit of waiting on the part of participants.
Please keep us updated on whether this makes a difference in your studies. We are eager to hear more feedback. Thanks!