You can recruit participants who possess certain characteristics using our participant targeting tools.

Within the study setup, you will see location, demographic, and platform targeting options. Location targeting allows you to choose the country in which participants are located (currently available countries include the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, and the UK). Demographic targeting allows you to choose from the demographic questions we use to profile participants. Platform targeting allows you to control participant eligibility for your study based on participation in past studies or by Connect IDs.  

Location Targeting

In November 2023, Connect expanded its participant pool to include access to other English-speaking countries, in addition to the United States. By default, your study will be open to all participants. To restrict access to a certain country, or to set quotas (see below) by country, select the location targeting option.

Demographic Targeting

The demographic targeting options allow you to narrow your target audience using demographic qualifications, quotas, or by applying a Census Matched template.

Demographic Qualifications

You can recruit participants who hold certain characteristics by applying demographic qualifications. You will know the qualification is being applied when the slider turns from "Not targeting" to "Targeting."

Quotas

When using demographic qualifications, you can control sample composition with quotas. Quotas give you control over how many participants from different demographic groups complete your project.

From the quota selection page you can specify how many participants from each level of your demographic qualifications you want to recruit. After toggling the quota option on, you will see options you can use to set your quota and

After setting demographic qualifications and quotas, you will have a chance to review your selections.

Census Matched Samples

When you choose to gather a Census-Matched sample, we apply quotas matched to the US Census on age, race, ethnicity, and gender. A Census-Matched sample is not a "representative" sample but by using quotas to approximate the U.S. population it attempts to be more generalizable than a sample gathered without these quotas.

How Can I Relax the Quotas? 

In some rare cases, the quota targets may cause your project to collect a much slower rate that you expect. To help with this, we have an option to speed up collection by loosening the quotas:

Once your project starts to move at a slower pace after 24 hours from launching, your quota criteria will be adjusted to allow for more participants to take your project.

If I Forgot to Select to Relax Quotas When Setting up my Study, Can I Relax Them After?

Researchers can relax Quotas after 48 hours if not originally selected.

1. If your project with quotas has been live for 48 hours, has not completed yet AND did not have the relaxed quota option checked off when setting up, then the speed up button will display.

2. When clicking “Speed Up”, the following message box will appear.

3. When selecting “Relax Quotas”, the lightning icon will appear under the study. 

What Happens When the Quotas are Relaxed?

EXAMPLE: 

Current Quotas (3 quota groups)

Gender: 50% Male / 50% Female

Race: 50% White or Caucasian / 40% Black or African American / 10% Asian

Age: 50% 18-29 / 50% 59+

By loosening quotas, participants that match 2 of the 3 quota groups would now be qualified to take your project. This will speed up data collection but can lead to over-recruitment in some of the easier to reach quotas. 

How Can I Request a Demographic that is Not Already on Connect? 

If there is a demographic you are looking to target with that is not already on the platform, you can request that it is added. You can do so within the demographic targeting window of the project creation page. Once you add your question and answer options, we will add it to our demographic profiling section and have several qualified participants within about a week.  

Platform Targeting

When wanting to target or excluding participants who completed previous studies you've launched, you'll want to utilize our platform targeting. 

You can then paste the Connect IDs of those you would like to include/exclude into the participants section.

Alternatively, you may include/exclude participants by creating a participant group (select Groups from the top of the below screenshot) or specifying the previous project's name.

Once you have figured out how you will be including/excluding participants, hit the Apply button so this can be added to your study. 

What to do if you Receive the Cannot Save Message. 

When adding demographics and quotas to your study, you may receive the following message which prevents you from saving the study.

You will receive this message if the N size you requested is too large for the demographics/quotas you have selected to target. You will need to lower the N size to something the system allows you to save with or remove some of the targeted demographics to allow for more participants to qualify for the study in order to run this on Connect. If this is not possible, please reach out to us at connect-support@cloudresearch.com and we can look into feasibility on Connect and other options for you to run the study with us.