Glossary 

This page gives short, plain-language definitions of the terms you will meet throughout this documentation — useful if you are running interviews or analyzing data and come across a term from protocol design you haven't seen before. Each entry links to the page that covers the concept in full, so you can start here and dig deeper when you need to.

Alter

A person (or other entity) that a participant names as part of their network during an interview. Participants create alters on name generator stages, and each alter is stored as a node in the network. In exported data, every alter is linked to the ego who named it — see Working with Data.

Attribute

The value of a variable recorded for a particular entity — for example, the age recorded for one alter. Architect calls the definition in the codebook a variable; the value stored on an individual node is its attribute. See Codebook.

Case ID

A short label — letters and numbers, up to 30 characters — entered at the start of each interview to help you keep track of and identify interview sessions in a way that is meaningful to your study. Case IDs are visible wherever you see interview sessions in Interviewer, and are included in all exported data. See Using Interviewer.

Codebook

The central record of every entity type (ego, node, and edge) and every variable defined in your protocol. Architect builds the codebook automatically as you work, and it helps you keep your protocol consistent and plan your data analysis. See Codebook.

Edge

A connection, or tie, between two nodes — for example, a friendship a participant draws between two alters on a sociogram. A protocol can define multiple edge types, and edges can carry their own variables. See Codebook for how edge types are defined.

Ego

The participant: the person a Network Canvas interview is about, whose personal network the interview captures. Data about the ego can be collected with the Ego Form interface, and appears in exported data as one row per ego.

Entity

The collective term for the things an interview records data about: the ego, nodes, and edges. The codebook organizes your protocol's variables by entity type. See Codebook.

Interface

A data collection instrument designed for a specific task — such as naming alters, drawing ties, or completing a form. You configure interfaces in Architect and add them to your protocol, where they become stages. See Interfaces for the full list of available interfaces.

Name Generator

An interface that asks participants to name the members of their network, creating alters. Several name generator interfaces are available, including quick-add, form-based, and roster-based variants. See Name Generator interfaces.

Name Interpreter

An interface that collects additional information about alters or ties that already exist in the interview — for example, sorting alters into categories or completing a form about each one. See Name Interpreter interfaces.

Node

A single entity in a network. Nodes often represent the people a participant has named (alters), but you are free to define node types that represent anything your study needs — places, for example. See Codebook for how node types are defined.

Prompt

A participant-facing question or instruction that explains which data to provide, or how to complete the task, on a given stage. A stage may contain a single prompt or several. See Prompts.

Protocol

The complete description of your interview: the stages, prompts, and logic it contains, along with any resources it uses. You build protocols in Architect, and move them between apps as .netcanvas files. See The Protocol File.

Resource

An external file or credential used within your protocol — such as images, audio, video, roster data, or an API key. Resources are embedded within the protocol itself. See Resources.

Roster

A list prepared before the interview in which each row can become a node in the network — for example, students in a classroom or workers in an office. Participants select alters from a roster using the Name Generator for Roster Data interface. See Working with Roster Data for strategies and file formats.

Schema

The set of rules that defines what a valid protocol file looks like. Schemas are numbered — a protocol's schema version — and a protocol's schema version controls which apps can open it; apps migrate older protocols to newer schema versions automatically. See Protocol Schema Information.

Sociogram

The visual mapping component of a network interview: participants position their alters and draw ties between them to show the relationships within their personal network. See Sociogram.

Stage

One of the individual screens that a participant sees during an interview. An interview is made up of one or more stages, and each stage is an instance of an interface that has been configured to collect specific data. See Interfaces.

Variable

A data field you define in your protocol to collect information about the ego, alters, or edges — an alter's age, for example. Each variable has a type (such as text, number, boolean, or categorical) that determines how it is collected and how it appears in exported data. See Variables.