When recruiting for a mission, it’s important to only find people who fit your research needs. To help, you can use targeting attributes to ensure participants meet basic requirements to qualify. Here’s an example: You’re conducting a study on streaming services and only want to hear from Hulu or Netflix subscribers. With targeting attributes, you can identify those people and disqualify anyone else.

Targeting attributes fall into the following categories:

• Apps & accounts.
• Demographics.
• Devices.
• Shopping.
• Subscriptions.
• Work.

Contents

• How do targeting attributes work?
• Targeting attributes in Recruit.
• Targeting attributes in Express.
• Targeting attributes in analysis.

How do targeting attributes work?

Targeting attributes filter applicants based on requirements you define while building your screener or mission. 

There are some attributes—called primary attributes—that use basic information in applicants’ Dscout accounts to verify. These include things like Age, Gender, or Education and are marked with a star in the builder: 

Other attributes are more specific to your research and will result in an additional question asked of your participants. For example, if your study requires participants to use a certain brand of headphones, that’s not information available in an applicants’ Dscout account, so they’ll have to answer that question when applying.

You can also take things one step further by limiting the number of participants selected from the same demographic segments. For more information, see Participant balance.

Targeting attributes in Recruit

When building a public Recruit screener, you’ll define targeting attributes on the Overview tab.

To add a targeting attribute to a Recruit screener:

1. Navigate to the Overview tab of your screener.
2. Select Targeting attributes in the left sidebar.
3. Select a type of attribute from the Categories drop-down. Or, use the search option to search for an attribute.
   
   
4. Click an attribute to add it to your screener. A list of options specific to that attribute will appear.
5. Select which options you want to apply to your participants.
   
   
6. Click Done.

Now, only applicants who meet the criteria you’ve selected will be able to participate in your mission. Repeat these steps to add more attributes. If you need to delete a targeting attribute, click the Trash icon in the top-right corner.

Targeting attributes in Express

When building an Express mission that recruits from Dscout’s pool of participants (also known as auto-recruit), you’ll define targeting attributes on the Screener tab.

To add a targeting attribute to a Recruit screener:

1. Navigate to the Screener tab of your mission.
2. Select Targeting attributes in the left sidebar.
3. Select a type of attribute from the Categories drop-down. Or, use the search option to search for an attribute.
   
   
4. Click an attribute to add it to your mission. A list of options for that attribute will appear.
5. Select which options you want to apply to your participants.
   
   
6. Click Done.

Now, only applicants who meet the criteria you’ve selected will be able to participate in your mission. Repeat these steps to add more attributes. If you need to delete a targeting attribute, click the Trash icon in the top-right corner.

Targeting attributes in analysis

Targeting attributes are not only useful when finding participants—they’re also helpful when analyzing results. Dscout automatically creates participant groups based on targeting attributes. For example, if you used the Marital status attribute to find participants who are married or in domestic partnerships, you’d see the following groups during analysis:

These groups function the same as other participant groups, so you use them to filter, edit them, or delete them as needed. For more information, see Participant groups.

Targeting attributes are available in exports. Since they function similar to participant groups, they’ll appear in the export file alongside other groups you may have utilized. For more information, see How can I export my data?