Designing Protocols 

In this phase of your study, you turn your research design into a protocol — a self-contained definition of your interview. A protocol describes the stages your participants will move through, each built from an interface; a codebook of node, edge, and ego variables that defines the data you will collect; and any resources — such as images, video, audio, or roster files — that your stages use. For a fuller picture of what a protocol contains, see The Protocol File.

Protocols are built in Architect, the Network Canvas protocol designer, which runs in your browser with nothing to install. The protocol you build here is what you will later run in Interviewer or Fresco to collect your data.

Where to start

If you are new to protocol design, we recommend working through these pages in order:

1. Getting Started — open Architect, learn your way around, and create or open your first protocol.
2. Building a protocol — a step-by-step tutorial that rebuilds the sample protocol, introducing stages, the codebook, and resources along the way.
3. Saving and backing up — understand how Architect stores your work, and how to keep safe copies of it.

When you need more depth, the Key concepts pages explain the ideas behind protocol design — interfaces, the codebook, variables, prompts, forms, and more — and the Interface documentation describes every interview interface in detail. For inspiration, the Protocol Gallery showcases protocols from published studies, showing how researchers have combined these building blocks in practice.

If your study uses Interviewer Classic

If your interviews must run in Interviewer Classic, the older desktop and tablet app, you will need to build your protocol in Architect Classic instead. See Choosing Architect or Architect Classic to understand the differences between the two versions.