Diary study webpages

If you're bringing your own participants to a diary study, a study webpage gives you a shareable link people can use to sign themselves up. It's an alternative to inviting each participant by email, and it's useful when you're recruiting from a list, a community, or a partner you'd rather hand a single link to.

Anyone who opens the link sees your study's overview, incentive, and branding, and can sign up on their computer or their phone.

Tip: You can also invite participants directly by email, or pull them in from a screener. For more information, see Invite participants to a diary study.

Enable a webpage for a diary study

Warning: Turn this on before you launch. Once a diary study is launched, the toggle is locked. You can't add a webpage to a study that's already running, or remove one.

To enable a webpage for your diary study:

Navigate to the Setup page of your study. Then, select Participants.

Under Bring your own participants, set the Enable Diary study webpage toggle to ON.

Now the webpage is set up and its URL is displayed, with a Copy button beside it. You can return here any time to copy the link again or preview the page. The link exists as soon as you enable it, but it doesn't work until the study launches. If you share it ahead of time, nobody can sign up until you launch.

Note: Unlike an interview study webpage, a diary study webpage has no participant limit and doesn't close on its own. Anyone with the link can sign up for as long as the study is open, so share it only as widely as you actually want to recruit. To stop new sign-ups, close the study.

Preview your webpage

Once the toggle is on, a preview appears beneath it so you can check what participants will see before you share the link.

To preview your webpage:

Under the webpage URL, click Click to preview. A preview of the page is displayed.

Review your study title, overview, incentive, and branding as a participant would see them.

Tip: The preview is built from your study's overview and incentive fields, so it's a quick way to sanity-check that copy. If the overview reads thin here, it'll read thin to the people deciding whether to join.

What happens when someone signs up

When a participant clicks Sign up for study on your webpage and either creates a Dscout account or signs in to an existing one, Dscout:

Adds them to your study's participant roster.
Sends them your study invite message.
Asks them to accept your study's informed consent document, if you're using one.

The invite is then waiting for them in the Dscout mobile app or on desktop web, and they appear on your study's Manage page like any other participant. There, you can message them, track their progress, and pay them how you would other participants.

Note: Participants your team recruits externally are not added to the Dscout participant pool and won't be contacted about other research opportunities.

Keep in mind that signing up isn't the same as being ready to participate. Depending on how you've set Scout experience, participants may still need the Dscout mobile app or the browser extension, and they aren't prompted for either until they open the study and try to start an activity. Because you're sharing a link rather than walking people through setup, it's worth naming the device they'll need in your invite message or recruiting copy.

Frequently asked questions

What URL will participants use to sign up?

Every diary study webpage follows the same pattern, with a code unique to your study:

app.dscout.com/scouts/welcome/opportunity/[code]

This is worth knowing if your organization—or the organization you're recruiting from—maintains an allowlist of approved external links. Share this path with whoever manages that list so participants aren't blocked from signing up.

Someone used the link but can't find the study. What now?

Occasionally a sign-up doesn't carry through, and the person ends up with an account but no study in their list. The quickest fix is to skip the webpage and invite them directly by email instead—that puts them on your roster the same way, and it's the more reliable path once someone has already hit a snag.

If it keeps happening to the same person, it's worth checking whether they have two Dscout accounts under slightly different email addresses, since the study will only ever appear under the one they signed up with. Contact support if you need help sorting that out.