User`s guide

E-Prime User’s Guide
Chapter 2: Using E-Studio
Page 60
To merge individual data files, navigate to the folder containing the data files using the Folder
Tree, select the files to be merged in the File List view, and click the Merge button. Refer to the
E-Prime Getting Started Guide, and Chapter 5 – Data Handling in the User’s Guide for more
detailed information.
In many circumstances, data files may be saved in different folders. For example, data files
collected by different research assistants may be saved in separate sub-folders within the same
directory, or on a shared drive. The E-Merge application provides a specialized merge procedure
to facilitate the process of merging files arranged in this way. The Recursive Merge operation
was designed to merge files from a selected folder and all of that folder’s sub-folders. When a
merge operation is launched, the user must specify whether the operation will be a Standard
Merge or a Recursive Merge operation.
2.11.1.1 Collecting data on multiple machines
Data files may be collected on multiple machines, and then merged for analysis. When collecting
data on multiple machines, take care to assign unique subject numbers. For example, when
collecting data on four separate machines, a scheme could be used in which all subjects run on
the first machine are numbered 101-199, all subjects run on the second machine are numbered
201-299, etc. For merge operations, it is important to keep experiment names and subject
numbers unique, or conflicts will arise during a merge operation. There are two methods of
merging the data for analysis.
Method 1: Copy all of the data from the separate machines to a single directory on one machine.
Copying may be accomplished through file transfer, using floppy disks, or e-mailing attached files
to be saved into the common directory. The relevant files are those with the EDAT extension.
Method 2: Have a shared disk space accessible by all of the machines, and save the data file to
that shared space. Each station could record its data in a separate area on the shared disk, and
E-Merge’s Recursive Merge feature could be used to aid in the process of merging these files
from different folders. For example, a two-computer, two-experiment shared data directory might
look like the directory tree below.