dscout is excited to announce two new features intended to make finding participants more seamless and offer researchers more control: participant balancing and question quotas. 

With participant balancing and question quotas, researchers can better home in on and target the right mixes of potential research participants for their studies. These are available for our Express and Recruit products. Read on to learn more about each.

Balance

Skewed participant samples—in the form of over recruiting specific groups of people—limits data's power, and insight-generation ability. With our balance feature, the dscout platform automatically ensures an equitable mix of potential participants on the following demographic variables:

1. Gender-identity
2. Age
3. Ethnicity

Simply click the toggle in the audience tab during setup to safeguard against participant pools with more than 65% on any segment within any of these variables (e.g., 13-17 year-old or identify as male). Balance is easy, ensures representative demographics mix, and keeps you focused on the more nuanced recruitment criteria needed to answer your research questions.

If your recruit requires even more control, then question quotas will meet your need.

Question Quotas

With question quotas, you have the option to set either “equal to” or “at most/at least” quotas. For “equal to” quotas, you’ll indicate the exact number of responses you’d like for a given choice. Use this when you’d like to ensure a specific number of responses for either one choice, or for multiple choices. If a participant's selection is above your set quota for that question, they'll be excused as a potential scout, saving you time. 

Use “at most/at least” when your recruit criteria is more flexible, but you want to ensure that at least a few participants pick a certain choice, or that too many participants don’t pick another choice. 

Use question quotas to:

• Ensure no more than 50% of your sample are "non-customers"
• Recruit a blend of participants that play different sports, ensuring that you get at least 5 participants that play tennis, while also ensuring that not more than 20 participants indicate they’re runners
• Seamlessly carry genpop recruits without having to manually filter and select scouts by hand. By using “at least” quotas, you can ensure that niche perspectives are still represented in your final recruit. 

Note: Multi-select questions will not have the “equal to” option. Participants who have selected more than one option in these questions will count toward the quotas of each separate option.

Together, participant balance and question quotas offer a new level of control and precision when recruiting and conducting quick-turn qualitative research. Obtain representative participant groups and protect against over-sampling on critical variables. 

Both are available now: Learn more about participant balance here and question quotas here.