Harmony Progression Discrimination Test (HPT)

The HPT is an adaptive test for harmony progression recognition.

Citation

We also advise mentioning the software versions you used, in particular the versions of the HPT, psychTestR, and psychTestRCAT packages. You can find these version numbers from R by running the following commands:

library(HPT)
library(psychTestR)
library(psychTestRCAT)
if (!require(devtools)) install.packages("devtools")
x <- devtools::session_info()
x$packages[x$packages$package %in% c("HPT", "psychTestR", "psychTestRCAT"), ]

Installation instructions (local use)

If you don't have R installed, install it from here: https://cloud.r-project.org/
Open R.
Install the ‘devtools’ package with the following command:

install.packages('devtools')

Install the HPT:

devtools::install_github('nicolasruth/HPT')

Usage

Quick demo

You can demo the HPT at the R console, as follows:

# Load the HPT package
library(HPT)

# Run a demo test, with feedback as you progress through the test,
# and not saving your data
HPT_demo()

# Run a demo test, skipping the training phase, and only asking 5 questions, as well a changing the language to German.
HPT_demo(num_items = 5, take_training = FALSE, language = "DE")

Testing a participant

The HPT_standalone() function is designed for real data collection. In particular, the participant doesn't receive feedback during this version.

# Load the HPT package
library(HPT)

# Run the test as if for a participant, using default settings,
# saving data, and with a custom admin password
HPT_standalone(admin_password = "put-your-password-here")

You will need to enter a participant ID for each participant. This will be stored along with their results.

Each time you test a new participant, rerun the HPT_standalone() function, and a new participation session will begin.

You can retrieve your data by starting up a participation session, entering the admin panel using your admin password, and downloading your data. For more details on the psychTestR interface, see http://psychtestr.com/.

The HPT currently supports English (EN) and German (DE). You can select one of these languages by passing a language code as an argument to HPT_standalone(), e.g. HPT_standalone(languages = "DE"), or alternatively by passing it as a URL parameter to the test browser, eg. http://127.0.0.1:4412/?language=DE (note that the p_id argument must be empty).

Installation instructions (Shiny Server)

Complete the installation instructions described under 'Local use'.
If not already installed, install Shiny Server Open Source: https://www.rstudio.com/products/shiny/download-server/
Navigate to the Shiny Server app directory.

cd /srv/shiny-server

Make a folder to contain your new Shiny app. The name of this folder will correspond to the URL.

sudo mkdir HPT

Make a text file in this folder called app.R specifying the R code to run the app.

To open the text editor: sudo nano HPT/app.R
Write the following in the text file:

library(HPT)
HPT_standalone(admin_password = "put-your-password-here")

Save the file (CTRL-O).

Change the permissions of your app directory so that psychTestR can write its temporary files there.

sudo chown -R shiny HPT

where shiny is the username for the Shiny process user (this is the usual default).

Navigate to your new shiny app, with a URL that looks like this: `http://my-web-page.org:3838/HPT

Implementation notes

By default, the HPT implementation always estimates participant abilities using weighted-likelihood estimation. We adopt weighted-likelihood estimation for this release because this technique makes fewer assumptions about the participant group being tested. This makes the test better suited to testing with diverse participant groups (e.g. children, clinical populations).

Usage notes

The HPT runs in your web browser.
By default, audio files are hosted online on our servers. The test therefore requires internet connectivity.

NicolasRuth / HPT