Configuring Devices Prior To Starting Data Collection 

Take the time to optimize the interview experience before starting data collection. Configuring your devices — and Interviewer itself — to suit your hardware, research population, and individual participant needs helps you to create the ideal interview environment.

Beyond these customizations, you should also complete some fundamental steps to ensure secure and stable data collection. This article describes these steps in sequence.

Prerequisites

Before configuring your devices, ensure you have:

• Opened Interviewer in your web browser, or downloaded and installed Interviewer Classic, on your target devices (tablets, computers, or both)
• Access to device settings on your Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, or Linux devices
• A protocol ready to import, or plan to create one for testing your configuration

The device-level steps below apply whichever version of Interviewer you are running. For the app-level configuration, choose your version below — the version-specific guidance updates to match.

Disable automatic updates

Google and Apple tablet devices automatically update software by default. This could create a situation where a new release of Interviewer renders your protocol unable to run, or where an update changes behavior in the middle of your data collection, leading to inconsistency. For this reason, we recommend that you disable app updates entirely on these devices and handle this process manually.

Turn on device-level encryption features

Any protection Interviewer itself provides is a layer to use in addition to device-level protections, not a substitute for them. Take the time to ensure you follow general security best practices: enable disk encryption on your device, and use strong user authentication, screen lock timeouts, and other physical security measures to secure your device. For a fuller list of measures, see our security best practices.

Configuring Interviewer

Interviewer is configured in two places: a short setup wizard that runs the first time you open the app on a device, and the Settings area on the dashboard (the gear icon).

The setup wizard walks you through securing your data. You choose how you will unlock the app — a biometric, PIN, or passphrase, or no app-level security at all. When you set a credential, the data stored on the device is encrypted at rest with a key derived from it. Complete this setup on every interview device before data collection begins: apart from changing a PIN, your security method cannot be changed later without revoking the device lock, which erases all protocols and sessions on the device. The wizard also asks whether you would like to share anonymous usage data, a choice you can change at any time.

Everything else is managed from Settings, which is organized into five areas: About, Data export, Privacy, Security, and Synthetic data. Before starting data collection, we recommend that you:

• Configure your export file formats and options in Data export. These are set once here and applied to every export, rather than chosen each time you export.
• Review the auto-lock timeout and re-authentication options in Security. If participants will handle the device during interviews, turn on require authentication when exiting an interview, so that a participant who exits an interview cannot reach the dashboard.
• Use Synthetic data to generate fake interview sessions and rehearse your full export workflow before collecting real data. For how this fits into a wider rehearsal of your study, see Piloting Your Study.

The Security and locking section of the Using Interviewer tutorial walks through the setup wizard and each Settings area in detail. For where your data lives, what protects it, and what can destroy it, see Data Storage and Safety.