ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Tests page > The Experiment management reports > The Animal details report

The Animal details report

Introduction

The animal details report brings together all the information ANY-maze holds about an individual animal.  Here you can enter details about the animal, alter its status and view its test schedule and results.

To access this report you should click the relevant animal's number on the Test schedule report.

Entering or editing the animal's treatment

At the very top of the animal details report is a drop list titled Treatment. Here you can select the animal's treatment or specify that the treatment is Undefined - i.e. the animal's not part of any treatment group. If you are performing a blind experiment then the drop list will show treatment codes, otherwise it will show the treatment names. If you want to find out how the treatments have been coded then you should switch to the Experiment page and select the Reveal treatment coding button in the ribbon bar.

Altering an animal's treatment group can be very useful if you mis-dose an animal - you simply need to change the animal's treatment. Of course you may also choose to change a different animal to receive this animal's treatment so as to maintain your group Ns.

If you want to enter the treatments for lots of animals then it's easier to use the Animals spreadsheet rather than accessing each animal's details report separately.

Altering an animal's status to deleted or retired

All animals have a status which is either Normal, Retired or Deleted. You can alter the animal's status simply by choosing the appropriate option from the Status drop list at the top of this report. The actual status's are described in detail in:

An animal with Normal status is neither Retired nor Deleted.

Specifying whether the animal is lighter or darker than the apparatus background

One of the tracking options in the Protocol specifies whether the animals are lighter or darker than the background of the apparatus. Normally you will be able to select one of these options and ANY-maze will apply it to all the animals in your experiment. However, in some cases you might plan to work with animals of different strains and some may be lighter and some darker than the background. In this case you will find that the animal details report includes an Animal colour drop list where you can select the appropriate setting for each animal individually.

If you want to specify this setting for lots of animals then it's easier to use the Animals spreadsheet, on the Experiment page, rather than accessing each animal's details report separately.

Recording data for 'animal fields'

If the experiment's protocol includes any fields defined for animals, such as weight, sex, age etc., then they will appear on this report and you can simply enter the appropriate information. Remember that you can use numeric fields (like weight) as dependent variables in analysis and choice fields (like sex) as independent variables.

If you want to enter data for lots of animals then it's easier to use the Animals spreadsheet, on the Experiment page, rather than accessing each animal's details report separately.

Recording the positions of movable zones

If the protocol includes any movable zones whose positions change between, but not within animals, then they will be listed in this report and you will be able to select the relevant position of each zone for this animal.

For example, in a water-maze you might have an island that's positioned in the North West for some animals and the South East for others (note that the position remains the same within an animal's trials). This zone would be shown on this page as a drop list and you'd be able to choose either 'North West', 'South East' or 'Undefined' as its position.

If you want to enter the position of a movable zone for lots of animals then it's easier to use the Animals spreadsheet, on the Experiment page, rather than accessing each animal's details report separately.

Recording notes about an animal

You can record notes that relate to an animal in the area immediately below the Animal Notes title on the Animal details report. You can enter anything you like. It's usually a good idea to record something if you retire or delete an animal explaining the reason why.

The first 80 characters that you type here will be included in the Data page spreadsheet (assuming the 'Animal notes' column is actually shown). For this reason it's a good idea to be fairly succinct, although there is, in fact, no limit to how much you can enter.

When the animal notes field is active (i.e. the cursor is in the field), the Animal notes format section of the ribbon bar will be enabled. This contains a number of options, which apply to any text that is currently selected in the notes field. (If no text is currently selected, then the formatting you select will apply to new text when you start typing).

Reset formatting

Resets the formatting of the selected text to the default formatting (i.e. removes any colour, bold, italic etc.)

Text colour

Opens a dialogue box allowing you to select a colour for the selected text.

Bold	Makes the selected text bold.

Italic

Makes the selected text italic.

Underline

Makes the selected text underlined.

Increase text size

Increases the size of the selected text by one point size.

Decrease text size

Decreases the size of the selected text by one point size.

Viewing the animal's test schedule

This report includes a mini test schedule for the individual animal. This makes it easy to review all the tests which an animal has received, which can be very helpful in a multi-stage/multi-trial experiment.

The data shown here is the same as that shown on the main Test schedule report (with the exception that animal number column isn't included) and, as on the main report, the Test numbers are links which will take you to the individual Test details reports.

One difference between the main Test schedule report and this one, is that here the reason why each stage ended is also shown. Also you can use the animal's test schedule to manually end the animal's tests in a stage or to have the animal

Ending an animal's trials in a particular stage

If a stage includes multiple trials, then the protocol may specify that the user can manually end the trials for individual animals - see Creating stage end rules. If this is the case then the animal's test schedule will include a link titled End xxx stage for this animal, clicking the link will end the stage with the reason User ended the stage.

Figure 1. Ending a stage manually for an animal. The highlighted link is only included if the protocol specifies that the user can manually end the trials for individual animals.

If you end a stage in this way then the animal's test schedule will change to include a link titled Restart this stage for this animal and clicking it will restart the stage. Note that if you restart an earlier stage for an animal (i.e. a stage prior to the current stage of the experiment) then all the current testing will be 'blocked' until the animal catches up - i.e. completes the earlier stage.

Viewing an animal's results

At the bottom of the report is a section which shows the results for all the animal's tests. The exact measures which are shown are defined in the protocol and you can easily alter them by clicking the link shown just below the report section's title.

Note that this report is not intended to be the main location for accessing an experiment's results (this is better done on the Results page or Data page) - rather the results are shown here to provide an easy way to view all the data for an individual animal in one place.

See also:

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ANY-maze help topic T0770