Best practices for first-time diary participants

Are you inviting externally-recruited participants to a study? Follow these steps to make sure that they have an exceptional experience.

If you screened for participants from Dscout's Scout Panel, take a look at this guide to launching your study.

Ask potential recruits to participate

It's important to ask potential recruits if they're interested in completing a Dscout project in the first place, and make sure they’ll be able to do so. These are just a few of the important things to confirm:

For diary studies with only mobile activities (participants will be using their smartphone):

• Make sure that they have an iPhone or an Android device that meets our OS requirements.

  Note: Participants must use a phone with iOS 16 or higher or Android 9.0 (Pie) or higher.

• Make sure that they’re willing to download an app.

• Make sure that they’re willing to take pictures and videos if you’re including those types of prompts in your study design.

• Feel free to share https://dscout.com/be-a-scout with them, so that they can learn a bit more about Dscout before getting started!

For diary studies with some or all desktop activities (participants will be using their smartphone + computer):

• Make sure that they have a laptop or desktop computer with a working camera and microphone.

• Make sure that they have Google Chrome browser version 80 or higher, or Microsoft Edge version 130 or higher.

• Make sure that they have the Dscout Chrome extension.

• Feel free to share https://dscout.com/be-a-scout with them, so that they can learn a bit more about Dscout before getting started!

If you're starting off with a list of names and emails of potential participants, send them a note asking them to get involved that looks something like this:

Hi there! &#xNAN;Thanks so much for being one of our most loyal and influential users. We're partnering with Dscout mobile research to make our products and services better, and we'd love for you to participate in a research project. If you'd be willing to download the Dscout mobile app for iPhone or Android and share your opinion -- including photos and videos -- by completing a series of activities, called a study, we'll pay you $40 for your time and effort. If you're interested, just reply to this email to let me know we can count on you!

-- Barbara F. E. Line, Insights Lead at the Society for Cat Owners

Let interested participants know what to expect

Once you've got a list of people who you know are interested in your project, send them a note mentioning your project's subject matter, time frame, and what kind of compensation participants can expect. It's also a good idea to mention how many study activities are in your project, and to point them toward Dscout's help & support page.

Hey! &#xNAN;Thanks for agreeing to be a part of this project about life as a cat owner! In a few days, you can expect to receive a welcome email from me inviting you to a 3-activity study that comprises this 2-week project. This email will come from [e-mail] and include a button for you to click to create your Dscout account. If you already have a Dscout account, you'll receive an email asking you to log in with your current Dscout information. Once you log in, you'll be able to see additional details about this project, start participating by answering questions and submitting "entries" of data, or ask me questions! If you complete all 3 activities, you'll have earned $40. Can't wait to learn more about your experiences.

-- Barbara

Invite participants

When inviting participants to a diary study, you have two options:

• Invite participants directly: If you already have participants in mind, you can add them directly to your study. You can add participants from a Dscout screener, from another Dscout study, or by email address. For more information, see Invite participants to a diary study.

• Use a study webpage: Set up a landing page where prospective participants can sign up to take part in your study. For more information, see Study webpage.

Study webpage

A study webpage is a custom webpage that streamlines the Dscout onboarding process for externally-recruited participants. You can generate this while building your study; simply navigate to Setup > Participants, and under Bring your own participants, toggle on Enable Diary study webpage to have a unique URL populated for you. For your participants, the webpage will look something like this:

Once you've finished setting everything up, it’s time to launch your study! After that, you can send your participants a note inviting them to the study:

Hello! It’s time to kick off our project about life as a cat owner! To get started, click here [insert your study webpage link]. From there, you will click 'Sign Up for Study' and be prompted to sign up for a Dscout account (or log into an existing account) and join the study! As a reminder, this project will be taking place over the course of a week, starting Monday. For completing all 3 activities of the study on time, you’ll earn $40! We are so excited to hear from you — please make sure that you are signed up and ready to go by this Friday at 11:59pm CT! If you have any questions or problems, feel free to reach out to [e-mail]. You can also consult Dscout's help & support page for tips and tricks.

Launch your study

Once you've added all of your participants, you're ready to launch. For step-by-step launch instructions and what happens after you launch, see Launch a diary study.