designate medialab to save data in a different directory?

Hi sbsl. If you're running MediaLab v12, you can go to "Preferences", "Edit Preferences", and then use the "Use Alternate Data Folder" option to specify where you'd like MediaLab to save your data. If you're running an older version (and I'm assuming you are), it's a little more complicated.

What type of security are you attempting to achieve? I'm assuming that you're trying to keep your research assistants from having access to raw data while still allowing them to run the experiment. If so, this method should work.

Once you've programmed your experiment, open the folder where you saved it (for example, "My Docments" or "MediaLab"). Right click on the icon for the experiment file and select "Create Shortcut". You can then place that shortcut wherever you like. Next, right click on the shortcut and select "Open With". Select "Browse", then find MediaLab. Set MediaLab as the program to open the file. Now when you double click the shortcut, it should automatically run the experiment. Your assistants would be able to run the file without ever going into the folder that contains the data.

If you just need to keep the data files separate from the questionnaire files, you can store all of your .que files for the experiment in a different folder than your .exp file. Say, for example, you could put all your .que files in a folder called "Measures" and your .exp file in a folder called "Experiment". When creating your experiment file, just point it toward the items in your "Measures" folder. You'll know you're doing this if, in your .exp file, instead of simply seeing the name of each .que file (e.g. "Instructions") you see a file path (e.g. C:/Experiment/Instructions.que). I've included a screen capture of a very simply example .exp file to show what this looks like.

I hope this helps.