Exporting

We export data from PsyNet experiments using the command line. Choose the appropriate command depending on whether you want to export data from a local experiment, an SSH server, or Heroku.

psynet export local
psynet export ssh --app my-app-name
psynet export heroku --app my-app-name

Note

Prepend docker/ to these commands if you are running PsyNet within Docker.

The data is saved by default to ~/PsyNet-data/export. The organization of exports and the naming of the files is still under discussion and development. If you want to choose your own export location, use the --path argument:

psynet export ssh --app my-app-name --path ~/Documents/my-experiment-data

By default the export command will download assets that were generated during the course of the experiment. This can slow down data export if you have many files. You can disable this behavior using the --assets argument:

psynet export ssh --app my-app-name --assets none

By default the export command will also try to export the experiment’s source code. This feature was causing some problems in PsyNet v11.7; if you experience an error during source code exporting, we recommend using the --no-source argument:

psynet export ssh --app my-app-name --no-source

Anonymization. Data can be exported in anonymous or non-anonymous mode. Anonymous mode strips worker IDs from the participants table and excludes assets that are marked as personal, for example audio recordings. This is good for producing datasets that you want to upload to open-access repositories.

Logs. When exporting from an ssh server the server logs will also be exported as a .log file. You can open this with a text editor to investigate what happened in a given experiment. It’s normally best to keep these logs private though, as it’s easy to imagine confidential information accidentally being leaked via such logs.

Database vs processed data. Data is by defaulted exported in both database form and processed form. The database form corresponds to the exact way in which the data is stored in the database when the experiment is live. This format is required if you want to resurrect an experiment from a snapshot. The processed form is more suited to downstream data analysis; it unpacks some of the data formats and merges certain information between tables.