Collecting responses through Web page drag and drop.
This article describes how to collect responses from experimental participants using drag and drop on a Web page. In particular, we describe how drag and drop can be used in a text search task in which participants read a text and then locate and categorize certain elements of the text (e.g., to identify the main claim of a persuasive paragraph). Using this technique, participants respond by clicking on a text segment and dragging it to a screen field or icon. We have successfully used this technique in both the argument element identification experiment that we describe here and a tutoring system that we created to teach students to identify source characteristics while reading historical texts (Britt, Perfetti, Van Dyke, & Gabrys, 2000). The implementation described here exploits the capability of recent versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser to handle embedded XML documents and drag and drop events.
Britt
M Anne
MA
Psychology Department, Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, IL 60115, USA. britt@niu.edu
Gabrys
Gareth
G
D003194:Computer-Assisted Instruction / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods*; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet / Q000295:instrumentation*; D011381:Programming Languages; D011589:Psychology, Experimental / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014584:User-Computer Interface