PsiTurk 1.0.1

A web framework for dynamic behavioral experiments

What is this?
============

PsiTurk is an open platform for conducting custom behvioral experiments on
Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

It is intended to provide most of the backend machinery necessary to run your
experiment. It uses AMT's _External Question_ HIT type, meaning that you can
collect data using any website. As long as you can turn your experiment into a
website, you can run it with PsiTurk!

You can direct questions to our [Q&A Google group](https://groups.google.com/d/forum/psiturk).

Install
=======

**Mac-specific instructions** Mac users will need to install a C compiler via
XCode; to do so, install XCode from the App store. Once you have downloaded it,
install the command line tools from the preferences as instructed
[here](http://stackoverflow.com/a/9353468/62179).

The easiest way to install PsiTurk is via `pip`. If you don't already have `pip`, you
can install it by typing the folloiwng in a terminal:

cd /tmp # Just to put us in a directory that will be cleaned up periodically
curl -O https://raw.github.com/pypa/pip/master/contrib/get-pip.py
python get-pip.py # If you get a permissions error, try typing sudo python get-pip.py

Once `pip` is installed, type into a terminal:

pip install psiturk # If this doesn't work, try sudo pip install psiturk


Quick Start
===========

Once PsiTurk is installed, you'll need to set up your environment.

1. Sign up for an AWS account, available [here](http://aws.amazon.com/).
2. Sign up for a Mechanical Turk requester account, available
[here](https://requester.mturk.com/).
3. In a terminal, install psiturk by typing `pip install
git+git://github.com/NYUCCL/psiTurk.git@dev`.
3. To use our example experiment, make a new directory and issue the command
`psiturk-setup-example`.
5. Start the dashboard by typing `psiturk`. The dashboard should pop up in a browser window.
6. To launch the experiment server, click the "on" button next to the word
"server" in the upper-right-hand corner.

*Note*: If you are just testing the server without posting your HIT to Amazon,
you can see the experiment at the following link:
http://localhost:22362/mturk?assignmentId=debug&hitId=debug&workerId=debug


Experiment design
=================

We have provided an example stroop experiment that could form the basis of your
own experiment. The task logic is programmed in Javascript, which will run in
your participant's browser. Most of the code can be found in
`static/js/task.js`. It works by dynamically changing the html document served
to participants in `templates/exp.html` and communicating with the server code
which can be found in `psiturk/psiturk.py`. PsiTurk assigns a condition and
counterbalance to each participant. PsiTurk actively manages the condition and
counterbalance subjects are assigned to, helping you fill them in evenly. These
are fed into JavaScript via code in `static/js/psiturk.js`. You can tell
PsiTurk how many conditions and counterbalance identities there are in the
dashboard's "Expt Info" tab.

Deployment
==========

Configuration
------------
To make your experiment available on the internet, make the following changes:

- Under the `Server` tab change `Host` to `0.0.0.0`.
- Under the `HIT Config` tab change `Ad URL` to
`http://yoururl:yourport/mturk`, replacing `yoururl` with the url to your
surver, and `yourport` with the port you have configured in `config.txt` (by
default, 22362).

Database
--------

We recommend using a deployment-robust database solution such as
[MySQL](http://www.mysql.org) or [PostgreSQL](http://www.postgresql.org).
SQLite does not allow concurrent access to the database, so if the locks work
properly, simultaneous access (say, from multiple users submitting their data
at the same time) could destabilize your database. In the worst (unlikely)
scenario, the database could become corrupted, resulting in data loss.

Instructions for setting up a MySQL server on a Mac can be found
[in the wiki](https://github.com/NYUCCL/psiTurk/wiki/Macintosh-Configuration).
Other platforms, check out instructions at
[mysql.org](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en//installing.html).

FAQ
---

* **I can't seem to get pip working**. If you are having trouble setting up
Python, we suggest installing the [Enthought Python
Distribution](https://www.enthought.com/products/epd/), which is licensed
for free to academics [at this
link](https://www.enthought.com/products/canopy/academic/). It provides a
kitchen-sink-included version of Python which includes `pip`.

Copyright
=========
You are welcome to use this code for personal or academic uses. If you fork,
please cite the authors (Todd Gureckis and John McDonnell).