IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR PMAT VERSION 2.0 As with the previous version of PMAT, if Java is not installed on your computer already, you will need to download it and install it (it's free) from the Sun website: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp From there you should click the link to download the JRE (i.e., the non-development version of java). As a step preliminary to releasing a User's Manual for Version 2.0, we have listed the enhancements and new features of this version below. In addition to these items, several existing bugs/issues have been resolved. PMAT 2.0 represents a much more stable, flexible, and user friendly version than its predecessor. PMAT FEATURES AND ENHANCEMENTS FOR VERSION 2.0: *Complete compatibility with PalmOS 5* PMAT is compatible with Palm OS 5 as well as OS 4. *Ordering of questions* Question orders can now be changed simply by moving them up or down in the question set listing. *Lock-out the Palm* On the main study screen is a checkbox that allows the researcher to either lock out participants from other Palm functions, or allows them open access to all Palm features. *More manageable output format* In the output file, time-based signals are now numbered according to day of study, signal of day, question set, and question within the question set (e.g., the question x in the question set y for the 4th signal on the 5th day would have the following series of numbers in the output file: 5 4 y x). Event-based signals are simply presented in the order in which they occurred along with a number designating the number within each day. For example, if someone completes 3 event-based surveys in a single day, the 3rd survey would have a 3 in the "signal" column. Of course, all signals still are time-stamped as well. To keep track of data for studies with both event- and time-based signals, there is a new column that identifies signals as either event-based (E) or time-based (T). *Object-oriented menus* The copy, cut, and paste functions now have been extended to the object level. What this means is that instead of being able only to copy and paste selected bits of text, you can now copy and paste an entire question or question set. It is pasted in at the bottom of the list for the particular type of object (e.g., a pasted question set appears as the last question set in the list). *How to deal with the various types of skipped signals* Due to the flexibility of PMAT in terms of allowing multiple simultaneous signal patterns, there are several reasons why some questions might not be answered. First, there are signals that fire, but are ignored or missed by the participants. Second, there are signals that would have fired, but the participant was busy answering other questions (e.g., in a combined event- and time-based study... while answering an event-based survey, a time-based signal comes in and is therefore skipped.). Third, there are signals that would have fired, but the participant placed the device in "Busy" mode. In order to let the research know the exact status of every response, we have incorporated a new column in the output file that categorizes each response as one of four types: 'V' represents a valid response; 'S' represents signals that fired but were skipped; 'C' represents signals that did not fire because of a conflict with another signal pattern; 'B' represents signals that were missed due to the device being set to "Busy" mode. *Double clicking* Occasionally, we have noticed that participants will double-click on the OK button (either accidentally because of digitizer sensitivity or on purpose because of they are used to double-clicking on computer devices). The result of which was that they answered the next question without having seen it. A related issue is that the digitizer in handheld devices (i.e., the hardware that reads in whether and where a tap occurs) tends to wear out if the same location is used repeatedly over time. PMAT 2.0 employs 2 related strategies to resolve these problems. First, there is now a 250 ms "dead-period" where participants cannot click on the OK button for a new question after responding to the previous question. The justification for this was that participants will be very unlikely to have read and processed the new question, no matter how brief it is, in less than 250 ms. Second, in order to reduce the wear on the digitizer in the bottom right corner of the handheld's screen, the OK button now shifts to different locations along the bottom of the screen at random. Ideally, this change should extend the life of each Palm used for research purposes. *Modified screens for signal patterns and signal assignment* PMAT 2.0 has changed the design of the signal pattern screen to be consistent with other processes in the application. So, changes must now be applied before they are added, and once the signal pattern has been created, it automatically displays the signal assignment screen. If changes must be made to the signal pattern itself, there is a clearly marked "Edit Signal Pattern" button for this purpose. The reason for setting it up this way is that changing the parameters of a signal pattern necessarily disrupts already assigned signals. Therefore, changing the signal pattern eliminates any assigned signals. In PMAT 1.1, this was unclear and might have resulted in accidentally losing a set of assigned signals. The current design makes clarifies the consequences of changing signal pattern parameters after signals have been assigned. MORE MINOR CHANGES *Better presentation for date and time stamp* The Date/Time stamp format has been altered to be more easily read by programs such as Excel and SPSS. *Better numbering for Palm database files* Although a very minor issue, PMAT 1.1 numbered study .pdb files with a number ranging from 1 to N, but did not have prefix zeros that matched the total number of exported files (e.g., 100 files were created, but the first file was filename-1 instead of filename-001). PMAT 2.0 now matches the number of prefix zeros to the total number of exported files. *More appropriate buffer constraint* Because the maximum length of time between two signals is determined by dividing the signal pattern duration by the number of signals, the Spacing constraint for "maximum" was obsolete. PMAT 2.0 now includes only a minimum spacing constraint that determines the smallest allowable duration between two signals. *Event signals require a frequency of 1* Despite the fact that an Event-based signal could, by definition, only occur once, PMAT 1.1 did not remove this constraint from those listed. It is now clearly fixed at 1. *Saved preferences* Settings such as window size and default directory are now set to be linked to the last session with PMAT (e.g., the window size when PMAT opens will be the same as the window size when it was last closed.)