How to Merge Data files with Inquisit's 'Merge' Tool
This help topic demonstrates how to combine data from different participants for any given test using Inquisit’s merge tool. To use Inquisit's 'merge' tool, you need the Inquisit Lab Editor installed on your computer.
If you don't have Inquisit Lab installed on your computer, download the Inquisit Lab free trial: https://www.millisecond.com/download/
Inquisit Lab provides you with the Inquisit Editor (aka the Inquisit programming environment). The Inquisit Editor will keep working even after the trial period has expired.
Open Inquisit Lab and select "Merge Data Files" from the File menu
Browse to the directory containing the data files that you would like to merge.
Then select all the data files you want to merge and click open (press the Shift key while clicking to multi-select):
Inquisit creates a single table with data from all participants
Save the combined data file to a folder you've created for your aggregate data files:
Repeat these steps for any other data files you want to merge
Example: summary data files from AUDIT
Once you've created these aggregate data files, you can combine the summary data from different tests using data analysis packages such as SPSS or Excel. We've used the following strategy in Excel:
Import the aggregate summary data files for each test into Excel.
Inquisit data files are simple tab-delimited data files that can easily be imported to other programs.
Make sure to select ‘all files’ as otherwise the files will not be displayed.
Import the data files using the Import Wizard
Excel created 2 data sets:
The imported summary files should have one line of data for each participant.
Tip: you may have to increase the size of some of the columns (e.g. startdate) to see the data.
If data are missing from some participants, insert rows into the tables that are blank except for the subject id. The goals is to have an equal number of rows with the same set of subject ids in all tables
Note: you may have to sort the datasets by 'subjectID' first before filling in the missing data lines.
Copy and paste the sorted data of interest from one file to the other.
Since both tables are sorted by subject id, their rows will align by subject ID.
