Screen for eligibility
Use a structured form question near the start of the guide. Mark answers that should qualify or disqualify someone, then send screened-out participants to the appropriate ending or panel redirect. Keep screening criteria limited to facts that matter for the research. For a refill-pack study, that might include recent category purchase and responsibility for choosing household products. Write the screening once, here: it is asked wherever the participant comes from. Someone recruited through Respondent answered your single and multi-choice questions on the panel before being invited, so their interview does not ask them again. Their answers arrive with them and count towards the quotas and the profile like anyone else’s. Verso always applies your rules itself, whichever side collected the answer, because the panel can only enforce part of them: it rejects on the options you mark disqualifying and on a single-choice option outside your qualifying list, while a multi-choice qualifying list, the quotas and anything conditional are yours. So a participant the panel let through but your screening or a quota turns away is turned away as they start, before a question is shown. Grid questions, Verso’s consent and questions that depend on an earlier answer are never sent to the panel and are always asked in the interview.Balance the sample
Set quotas on answers to single-select questions when the study needs a defined mix of participants. On the question’s card, choose Add quota from the... menu, then pick Max, Min or Exact on an answer and type the number. A quota is a minimum, a maximum, or both; Exact puts the same number on both.
- A maximum stops new participants from joining a cell once it is full.
- A minimum protects a cell you cannot afford to miss. Once the cells still short of their minimum need every place left before your completion target, Verso turns away participants whose answers put them outside those cells.
A minimum that is reached does not close its cell: France keeps taking participants while the places left are not all needed by the other minimums. When minimums nobody can count toward together, such as the answers of one question, still need more places than are left, they can no longer all be met, and each place left goes to a participant who counts toward one of them. Once the completion target is reached, a minimum turns nobody away, so a participant still answering is not stopped for one; a full maximum still stops whoever its question puts in it.
A quota counts completed interviews that are neither tests nor hidden. A visible rejected interview still holds its place; hiding it frees the place.
To count several answers of one question together, such as 6 to 10, 11 to 15 and 16 years or more, choose Quota on several answers under the card’s options, tick the answers, then pick the kind and the number. A quota on one question always lives on its card, wherever you create it.
A quota can also cover a combination of answers across several questions, such as women aged 25 to 34. You create it in Advanced settings, under Scheduling & quotas, and each question it reads shows it on its card, with Edit taking you back to it. The Quotas list there shows every quota of the study, the ones set on question cards included, and you can edit or delete any of them there. While the guide has unsaved changes, the quotas on one answer set on question cards are shown but edited on their card, and once a card’s quota on several answers is unsaved, the list is read only until you save. Choose Add quota, add a Criterion for each question with the answers that count, then pick Max, Min or Exact and a number. Several answers on one question count as “either”, and the questions together count as “and”. A quota across questions uses single-choice questions and answers that do not screen anyone out.
Verso judges a minimum against the completion target, so a minimum needs one: a study with a minimum and no completion target cannot be saved, nor can one whose minimums add up to more than the target when no participant can count toward two of them, such as the answers of one question. Verso also refuses a minimum that a smaller maximum makes impossible, such as at least 5 French women when France is capped at 3, and two quotas on exactly the same answers. Deleting an answer on a question card removes it from the quotas that use it, and a quota left with no answer on one of its questions goes too; deleting a question a quota across questions uses is refused, naming the quota, and so is a change from the API or the design assistant that deletes an answer a quota still uses.
Fill fast or stay on budget
When unsure sets how a quota or the completion target counts participants who are still answering.- Fill fast is the default. Only completed interviews count, so the study fills quickly but can end slightly over a quota or the target: a quota is checked when its question is answered and the target when an interview starts, so participants answering at the same time can all get in before any of them completes.
- Stay on budget also counts other participants’ interviews with activity in the last 15 minutes as taken. A quota or the target is far less likely to end over, at the cost of turning more people away while others are still answering; a place held by someone who stops answering frees up after 15 minutes without activity.
Segment the sample
Segments name the client profiles a study recruits on when several screener answers define one at once, such as “under 28 and five trips or more”, or “a season ticket, or both discount cards”. Your Verso team sets a study’s segments for you from the brief, in priority order. Each participant is placed in the first segment their screener answers match, as soon as those answers make it certain, and keeps that segment; a participant matching none continues the interview without one. Participants never see their segment. A section can then be shown only to some segments, or to everyone but some of them: in the section’s condition, the if list offers the segments after the questions, numbered by priority. A segment is listed but unavailable on a section placed before the question that decides it, and its tooltip names that question. The recruitment page splits completed interviews by segment, with a No segment row, so you can check the segments fill evenly while recruiting. Changing the segments once interviews are completed asks for confirmation, and participants already placed keep their segment. A segment can carry a maximum. Once it is full, the next participant who would land in it leaves out of quota, or, if your Verso team turned on the cascade for the study, is placed in the next segment they match that still has room. A participant placed that way keeps a note of the full segments they matched, shown with their answers. The recruitment page lists each segment’s maximum with the other quotas. Test at least one qualifying route, one rejected route, and every quota-bearing answer before launch. Recruitment criteria and guide wording should match so participants are classified consistently.Links, panels, and targets
Connect participant sources, redirects, and the overall completion target.