Screener Questions

Screener questions automatically qualify or disqualify participants before they start the interview. Participants answer these questions first, and based on their responses, they either proceed to the interview or are screened out.

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Setting Up Screener Questions

You can add screener questions three ways:

• Manually in the topic guide editor on the Design tab (steps below).
• Via the AI Design Assistant on the Design tab — ask it to add screener questions as part of setting up your study.
• Via the AI Recruit Assistant on the Recruit tab — describe the participants you want to qualify and it creates the screener questions alongside panels and quotas.

To add one manually:

1. Create a new question under a screener objective
2. Choose Single-select, Multiselect, or Open text
3. For choice questions, add answer options and set their qualification categories. For Open text, define the categories the AI should use to classify answers.

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Qualification Categories

Single choice questions: Multiple choice questions: Participants must pass the screener questions they are asked. A disqualifying answer ends participation before the main interview. After screening is complete, quotas and any stimulus eligibility rules also determine whether the participant can continue.

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Open Text Screeners

Use Open text when participants should answer in their own words, without seeing a list of qualifying answers. Conveo uses AI to assign each response to one researcher-defined category. That category’s Qualify or Disqualify setting determines the screening result.

1. Add an Open text question to a screener objective, manually or with a design or recruiting assistant.
2. Use Add category to define each possible classification.
3. Give each category a clear label and a description explaining which answers belong in it.
4. Set each category to Qualify or Disqualify.
5. Test the study with qualifying, disqualifying, ambiguous, and unexpected responses before recruiting.

For example, ask “How have you used a meal delivery service in the last month?” Define a qualifying category for recent paying customers and a disqualifying category for everyone else. Describe how to handle free trials, cancelled subscriptions, and unclear answers. The original text and chosen category are stored. Classification categories can also be used in quota conditions and stimulus eligibility rules.

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Example

Question: “Do you currently use our product?” (Single choice)

• “Yes, regularly” → Qualify
• “Yes, occasionally” → Qualify
• “No, I’ve never used it” → Disqualify

Question: “Which features have you used?” (Multiple choice)

• “Dashboard” → Must select
• “Reporting” → May select
• “None of the above” → Disqualify

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Special Screener Condition: Must Select X or Y

Use this setup when participants must select at least one specific answer option from a multi-select screener question in order to qualify for the study. This is particularly useful when a question includes several possible answers, but only some of them are considered valid for participation. Participants may select multiple options, but they must select at least one of the predefined valid answers to continue. To enforce this requirement, you can configure quotas that prevent participants who select none of the valid options from continuing. When implementing such a screener question, follow these steps:

1. Create a normal screener question, and set the question type to multiselect
2. For each answer option, assign the qualification category ‘May select’
3. After selecting a panel, create a new quota group
4. Define the quota condition
   • Select the corresponding screener question
   • Choose ‘Selected options’
   • Set the condition to ‘Contains none of’
5. Under Select options, toggle all answer choices that qualify as valid - these are the options of which at least one must be selected by the participant
6. Add the following quota for this segment: use the ‘Exactly’ quota operator and set the value to zero
   • Setting the quota to “Exactly = 0” ensures that no participants who meet the “Contains none of” condition are allowed to continue

With this configuration, a live participant who selects none of the defined valid options falls into the zero-cap quota and cannot continue. This produces a quota-reached outcome, rather than a failed-screener outcome. Test interviews bypass quota checks during screening; see Testing Your Study before validating this setup. Example: Following example shows the use-case of a ‘Must Select X or Y’ screener condition.

• Screener question: “Do you own any pets, and if yes, which of following do you own?”
• Answer possibilities: “Cat”, “Dog”, “Rabbit”, and “No, I do not own any pets”
• Valid answers: “Cat” and “Dog”

If the participant selects “Rabbit” or “No, I do not own any pets”, they will be prevented from continuing. Only when “Cat” and/or “Dog” is answered, the participant is eligible to participate in the main study. Note: the answer “Cat” and “Rabbit” is also a valid answer combination.

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Panel Provider Integration

For recruitment links configured with panel redirects, Conveo sends participants to the corresponding outcome URL. A failed screener uses the screen-out destination; a full quota or response limit uses the quota-reached destination. Provider billing and incentives depend on the recruitment arrangement, so do not infer a billing guarantee from an interview status.

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Advanced Recruiting with Quotas

Screener questions can do more than just qualify or disqualify — you can use them with quotas to set targets and admission limits for segments of your sample, such as dog and cat owners or age groups. Read the quota behavior and limitations before interpreting a target as a guaranteed completed sample.

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Screening in Diary Studies

Screener routing can limit questions to the first diary entry. If a returning participant is asked screeners again, a disqualifying answer still screens them out. Stimulus eligibility uses the current interview’s screener answers; it does not automatically reuse answers from a previous diary entry. Review screener-directed allocation before combining eligibility rules with first-entry-only screeners.

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Viewing Screener Results

Screener responses appear in the Interview Grid as columns and in Question Analysis for aggregate views. You can filter your analysis by screener responses to compare segments.

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Need help? Contact us at support@conveo.ai