4 Tips for Reaching High-Quality Respondents

User research relies on valuable insight; valuable insight only comes from high-quality respondents. High-quality research participants that meet your target demographic and are verified to be who they say they are. But how do you reach them?

Here are a few quick tips to help you get to your desired audience as quickly possible:

1. Carefully call out target audience in project title/pitch

Participants opt into studies that entice them the most. The more specific you can be, the easier it is for them to know if they’d be a good fit and opt in to your screener survey.

A project title like “Seeking Experts” tells participants nothing about what type of expertise you’re looking for. Given the plethora of screener surveys they have to choose from, your title has to hook your target demo quickly and precisely, or else they’ll move onto the next one without even glancing at your pitch.

Try a more specific title like “Seeking Growth Marketing Experts to Discuss Daily Software Use.” Then dig a bit deeper in your pitch to provide more details about what you’re hoping to learn from them. This will help attract the right audience and disqualify the wrong ones from the start, so you can get to your insights faster — and ensure they’re top-notch.

2. Set an effective incentive amount

Incentive amounts should be determined by the details of your project. The more time and effort your participants invest in your project, the higher the incentive should be for their time. For example, in-person recruits require travel time and more coordination from the participant in order to join, so they’ll expect to be compensated more than they would for a project conducted remotely.

Additionally, incentive recommendations are lower for General Population audiences than they are for B2B market research because they have limited requirements. The choice of incentive will determine the attractiveness of your project to potential applicants, but could also impact your research recruitment costs. Take a look at Respondent’s incentive recommendations here or use our handy data-driven research incentive calculator to find the suggested incentive for the audience you need.

Ultimately, a healthy incentive leads to a higher initial response rate and less time required to fill the study.

3. Aim for 7–10 screener questions

A screener survey lets you, the researcher, confirm participants meet all requirements for your study, prior to inviting them to an interview. The more you can determine from your screener, the less time you’ll need to invest communicating back and forth before the participation itself, especially in qualitative interviews.

You’ll want to ensure your screener covers all bases without overwhelming the participant prior to your in-depth interview. This will help qualify the best participants while disqualifying the ones who aren’t knowledgeable enough on the subject at hand. With too many questions, you may deter the right participants from opting in. Without enough, you open your project to those who may be less knowledgeable or who are otherwise not the right fit.

Our research analyzing thousands of screeners on Respondent has determined that 7–10 questions is the ideal number of questions to qualify participants successfully.

4. Re-screen participants

The final step before you begin your interviews is doing any last-minute checks with your participants to ensure they’re the best fit for your study. If there is anything you’re unsure about based on their screener or a critical question you may have forgotten to ask, now is your chance to clarify so you can get the most value out of your interview time.

To get that last-minute info before scheduling your interview, you have a couple of options:

Message through Respondent

• Send a quick message to participants via the Respondent platform
• You can always refer back to these messages after the study

Phone call

• Gather phone numbers via Respondent messaging and do a quick 5-minute pre-screen call to make sure you and your participant are on the same page!

These four tips should get any new research project off to a strong start.

If you have any questions about the information above or would like a demo of the Respondent platform, please reach out to our help center. Or create a free Respondent account and begin recruiting top-quality respondents today!