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Welcome to the tickStat documentation. tickStat is an online survey and experiment platform built by academic researchers for academic researchers. It supports the advanced methodologies that traditional survey tools cannot — Discrete Choice Experiments (DCE), Q methodology, the Implicit Association Test (IAT), the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), factorial vignette experiments and game-theoretic experiments — alongside high-quality fielding, multilingual translation in 14 languages, and analysis-ready data export to SPSS, Stata and R.
Use the navigation on the left to browse the full documentation, or jump straight to the methodology pages below.
Methodologies¶
Discrete Choice Experiments (DCE)¶
The flagship methodology in environmental and health economics, marketing research and stated-preference studies. Respondents face a sequence of choice cards that systematically vary the attributes of competing alternatives, and from their choices the platform recovers attribute-level part-worths and willingness-to-pay estimates.
tickStat generates the experimental design (full and fractional factorial, optimal designs via R), fields the cards on web and mobile with status-quo support, and analyses the data with Multinomial Logit (MNL) out of the box plus a server-side Mixed Logit / Random Parameters Logit (RPL) queue — including σ-distribution heterogeneity, lognormal cost coefficients and per-respondent willingness-to-pay simulation.
Read the Discrete Choice Experiment guide →
Q Methodology¶
A workhorse method in policy research, environmental psychology and viewpoint analysis. Respondents Q-sort a set of statements onto a forced-distribution pyramid, and factor analysis identifies the shared viewpoints that exist in the sample.
tickStat implements the full Q-sort interaction (drag-and-drop placement, mobile-friendly), the Consensus Pyramid dashboard, and a one-click Factor Analysis with varimax rotation and factor interpretation reports ready for publication.
Read the Q methodology guide →
Implicit Association Test (IAT)¶
The standard measure of implicit attitudes in social, environmental and consumer psychology. Respondents quickly classify stimuli into combined categories using the keyboard, and the millisecond-resolution response latencies reveal the strength of automatic associations the respondent may not be willing — or able — to report directly.
tickStat captures per-trial timing, classification errors and presentation order in the browser, and exports the per-trial micro-data ready for D-score computation (Greenwald, Nosek and Banaji, 2003) in R, Python or any statistical tool.
Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)¶
Saaty's structured technique for deriving priority weights from pairwise comparisons instead of direct ratings — invaluable in multi-criteria decision analysis, stakeholder weighting and prioritisation studies where direct rating questions hit the ceiling effect.
tickStat auto-generates the n(n − 1)/2 pairwise comparisons from a list of items and captures judgements on a continuous Saaty 1–9 slider. The exported data feeds directly into eigenvector weight estimation and Consistency Ratio (CR ≤ 0.10) checks.
Factorial vignette experiments¶
Short structured scenarios with experimentally varied attributes, widely used in sociology, public health, social policy and management research. Vignettes combine the realism of a survey with the causal-inference power of a factorial experiment: random assignment of attribute levels lets you identify the marginal effect of each attribute on the respondent's evaluation.
tickStat reuses the choice-experiment infrastructure (full and fractional factorial designs, balanced randomisation across respondents) but presents each scenario in single-card rating form — slider or Likert — instead of a forced choice.
Game-theoretic experiments¶
Interactive economic games embedded in the survey — the standard tool of experimental economics for studying cooperation, coordination, trust and pro-social behaviour under controlled strategic incentives.
tickStat synchronises respondents in real time via WebSockets, tracks rounds and periods, and computes payoffs at the end of each session. The Weakest-Value (Minimum Effort) Coordination Game is exposed out of the box; Trust, Dictator and Public Goods variants run on the same engine and can be activated for specific projects.
Platform features¶
Beyond the methodology engines, tickStat provides the operational infrastructure required to field high-quality research:
- Quotas, filters and sample management — hierarchical quota trees, screening logic, and fairness guarantees under concurrent fielding. See Filters and quotas.
- Quality control — cross-panel browser-fingerprint deduplication, attention indices, time-on-page metrics, careless-response detection. See Quality control.
- Multilingual surveys — automatic translation to 14 languages via Google Cloud Translate, with translator review workflow and per-language preview. See Surveys.
- Reporting and dashboards — interactive cross-tab dashboards, full SPSS/Stata-ready data export with proper variable labels, dedicated workflow graphs. See Reporting and Analysis.
- Longitudinal studies — multi-wave panel management with prerequisite enforcement and per-respondent participation tracking. See Longitudinal studies.
- AI agents — an in-app help assistant grounded in this very documentation, plus a Review Agent that audits your survey design for issues before fielding. See AI help agent and Review questions agent.
Trusted by academic research¶
tickStat is in active use at research centres including CSIC, INIA and leading European universities — Complutense, Zaragoza, Granada, Cádiz, Córdoba, Sheffield, Innsbruck, Vigo and Castilla La Mancha, among others.
Getting started¶
The fastest way to get a feel for the platform is the Getting started guide — a short walkthrough covering authentication, creating your first survey, defining questions and previewing the respondent view. From there, the Surveys and Questions sections cover the day-to-day operations of building a study; the methodology pages above go deep into each experimental paradigm.