Conceptual overview

Sessions

In oTree, a session is an event during which multiple participants take part in a series of tasks or games. An example of a session would be:

“A number of participants will come to the lab and play a public goods game, followed by a questionnaire. Participants get paid EUR 10.00 for showing up, plus their earnings from the games.”

Subsessions

A session is a series of subsessions; subsessions are the “sections” or “modules” that constitute a session. For example, if a session consists of a public goods game followed by a questionnaire, the public goods game would be subsession 1, and the questionnaire would be subsession 2. In turn, each subsession is a sequence of pages. For example, if you had a 4-page public goods game followed by a 2-page questionnaire:

_images/session_subsession.png

If a game is repeated for multiple rounds, each round is a subsession.

Groups

Each subsession can be further divided into groups of players; for example, you could have a subsession with 30 players, divided into 15 groups of 2 players each. (Note: groups can be shuffled between subsessions.)

Object hierarchy

oTree’s entities can be arranged into the following hierarchy:

Session
    Subsession
        Group
            Player
  • A session is a series of subsessions
  • A subsession contains multiple groups
  • A group contains multiple players
  • Each player proceeds through multiple pages

You can access any higher-up object from a lower object:

Participant

In oTree, the terms “player” and “participant” have distinct meanings. The relationship between participant and player is the same as the relationship between session and subsession:

_images/participant_player.png

A player is an instance of a participant in one particular subsession. A player is like a temporary “role” played by a participant. A participant can be player 2 in the first subsession, player 1 in the next subsession, etc.