Hi folks,

using Version 2.55.1+161026
I'm setting up a survey as part of an experiment for my master's thesis. Now in part of the survey I want to do a baseline measure for people's ability to remember lists of words. For this, I want to have a number of words (say 10) to be displayed subsequently for 3 seconds each. Then afterwards the respondent is asked to reproduce all of the words that were displayed.

How I've tried this:
1) Created a survey that displays each question on a new page
created a question group with 10 DisplayText questions in it, each containing one of the words and a 3 second time limit (selected move on without warning).

2) Created a survey displaying question groups per page
Created 10 question groups each containing 1 DisplayText question with a word in them and a 3 second time limit (selected move on without warning)

3) Gave up on subsequent displaying and went with another display question-groups per page survey
Created one Displaytext question containing the full list of words. the page had a 30 second time limit (move on without warning).

In all three of these cases, it seemed to work in my first couple of preview tests. Then (even without altering anything, just repeating the previews for testing) all of a sudden, the timer countdown would not function and the questions would only be showed for a few milliseconds before jumping to the next. Giving the user no time to read, This also happens in published surveys.


Anybody have an idea what I could do to solve this? or a workaround? I feel completely stuck and need to have this thing set-up for my experiment in a week time .

All help is largely appreciated

SandersKev wrote: In all three of these cases, it seemed to work in my first couple of preview tests. Then (even without altering anything, just repeating the previews for testing) all of a sudden, the timer countdown would not function and the questions would only be showed for a few milliseconds before jumping to the next.

There are some issues around timer being not reset when doing tests.
To me it sounds like the timer is not reset since the cookie is the same.
Please do your tests via a new browser session (private mode or how that might be called in the browser you use).
You have to ensure that the cookie for the survey is cleared.
Check if you still have issues when doing every new test in a fresh,cookie-free browserwindow.

The bug is described here.
bugs.limesurvey.org/view.php?id=11800
The fix seems to be only available in a develop branch.

Hi Jelo,

Thank you so much! As I'm managing the experiment computer I can have my participants all use a private browsing mode and then it should work just fine so that seems like a workable solution for now.

Thanks again!

SandersKev wrote: I can have my participants all use a private browsing mode and then it should work just fine so that seems like a workable solution for now.

I was talking about your test environment. When you hit the test button from your Limesurvey admin console you experience these issues (and some others too). Check that now to ensure that your issue is gone. We both don't know if that is the main cause of your struggle with your survey.

In a computer lab a way to ensure a fresh browser for every user seems to be a requirement even when you're not having a "fight" with LimeSurvey. So cleaning cookies etc. between every run seems to be quite natural in a lab environment.
I am not sure how probands are getting into the survey. Kiosk mode? Everybody logs into a computer with it's own credentials and then opens a link. Is the link personalized (token?).

I never got used to LimeSurvey timer functions. There were always a glitch or a user experience issue which prevented that I used them.
So please check with clean browser window if the issue remains.
Good luck with your study.

It will be sort of a kiosk type setting as there will be one dedicated machine for the whole thing. I will be there and will have plenty of time to clear the computer's browser cache and cookies etc. in between participants so this setup should work I think. Will make sure to test it all thoroughly though for now, the first couple of preview tests I've done here seemed to work fine if I started a new instance of the private browser every time.