About trial
The Behaverse Trial Schema defines a set of tidy tables describing trial-level behavioral data — the task-specific aggregates derived from raw events — for cognitive tests and questionnaires. It is the Trials layer of the Behaverse Data Model (BDM).
Motivation
A trial is a single instance of a participant interacting with a task. The information about a trial naturally spans several related entities — the response, the stimuli shown, the options offered, the raw inputs, and the instrument used. Rather than flatten that into one wide table, the trial schema models it as a small set of tidy tables joined by _id foreign keys, so each concern stays normalized and analysable.
The tables
| Table | Fields | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Response | 75 | Main table; one row per response in a trial. |
| Stimulus | 19 | Each stimulus shown during a trial. |
| Option | 18 | Each option a subject could choose from. |
| Input | 15 | Detailed log of inputs/clicks during the trial. |
| StimulusComponent | 13 | Components that make up a stimulus. |
| OptionComponent | 14 | Components that make up an option. |
| Instrument | 7 | The instrument (and its parameterizations) used for acquisition. |
Each table is a group in the sidebar; expand one to browse its fields, each of which has its own page.
Conventions
- A trailing
_iddenotes a foreign key into the table of that name (e.g.stimulus_id→ the Stimulus table). - When several entities occur in one trial (e.g. multiple stimuli), their ids/values are concatenated into a single string on CSV export.
Relationship to events
Trial-level data is derived from the raw event stream (the Events layer of the BDM — see the event schema). Events capture what happened moment-to-moment; trials are the task-specific aggregates analysts work with.
Namespace & source
- Namespace:
https://behaverse.org/schemas/trial# - Source of truth:
field-definitions.yaml(hand-maintained). The docs and thefield-definitions.jsonrender contract are generated from it; a per-tableschema.jsonis planned.
Status
Work in progress, relocated from behaverse/data-model. Published as-is while a handful of typing and structure follow-ups are tracked.