Recruitment emails that include "screeners" for specific surveys are crucial to the recruitment process. A screener helps to determine whether a member is qualified to participate in a community. A well-targeted screener ensures that the data collected comes from people who fit the target demographic for your research project.

Helpful Screener Suggestions

While not all screeners will be the same, some best practices should be implemented for all community screeners:

• Keep it short and sweet—ideally 10 questions or less. A shorter screener leads to a better user experience which yields lower drop-out rates.
• Questions with no term, quota, or, logic associated with them should be removed from the screener and moved to a Profiling Survey or Member Profile. This helps to keep the screener short and sweet.
• Community opt-in should be shown after a respondent qualifies (see Appendix for sample text).
• Any questions that generate “Prefer not to say” answers should qualify for termination.

If using special question types, make sure to test out whether they will import as Profile Points. One such example is the Cascading Drop-Down Menu. Due to API configurations, this question is not compatible with profile points. It’s always best when writing a screener to stick to text boxes, single/multi-select, and grids. These standard question types will always import correctly. 

If you need assistance with testing a certain question type with Profile Points in Qualtrics or Alchemer, please contact your Fuel Cycle account team.

Redirects

Redirecting respondents within surveys either to their community, a panel provider, or any website you want once they trigger a certain action in a survey.

URL Variables (known also as “query strings”, “URL query parameters” or “URL Parameters”) are elements inserted in your URLs to help you filter and organize content or track information on your website. In short, URL variables are a way to pass information about a click using the URL itself.

To identify a URL parameter, refer to the portion of the URL that comes after a question mark (?) where the parameter starts. URL parameters are made of a key and a value, separated by an equal sign (=). Multiple parameters are each then separated by an ampersand (&).

A URL string with parameters looks like this:

https://www.example.com/widgets?color=blue&sort=newest

Program a Qualtrics Screener

For more comprehensive, step-by-step instructions on creating a screener in Qualtrics, please refer to this article.

Redirects

Success Redirect URL

${e://Field/redirectURL}&surveyId=${e://Field/SurveyID}&responseId=${e://Field/Response
ID}&qualified=true

Failure Redirect URL (use for qual failure)

${e://Field/redirectURL}&surveyId=${e://Field/SurveyID}&responseId=${e://Field/Response
ID}&qualified=false&reason=LOGIC&disqualifiedStep=Q1

Over Quota Redirect URL (use for quota logic)

${e://Field/redirectURL}&surveyId=${e://Field/SurveyID}&responseId=${e://Field/Response
ID}&qualified=false&reason=OVER_QUOTA

The red text portions in the Failure and Over Quota Redirects can be changed so that you can track disqualification numbers through the FC platform dashboards. These designations should not include spaces and typically should be written in all caps. (e.g. HOUSEHOLD_INCOME).

Record Terminations

If using a Qualtrics set up by Fuel Cycle, the standard practice is to select the Screen-out Response option on your End of Survey blocks.

This option will be available on all Fuel Cycle-configured Qualtrics accounts. If using a corporate account, the Screen-out Response option may not be available. Please contact your Fuel Cycle account team for recommendations on configuring terminations.

Survey Options

The following survey options should be implemented on any screeners programmed in Qualtrics.

• Survey Protection Settings:
  • “Open Access” enabled
  • “Prevent Ballot Box Stuffing” enabled
  • ”Prevent Indexing” enabled
• Partial Completion
  • Record responses in progress 6 months after the respondent’s start of the survey

Program an Alchemer Screener

For more comprehensive, step-by-step instructions on creating a screener in Alchemer, please refer to this article.

Skip/Disqualify and URL redirect actions do the same thing—they send someone somewhere else. However, the skip/disqualify also can send respondents somewhere else in the survey. The skip/disqualify action only re-routes the respondent somewhere else entirely.

Redirects

Paste the following into the text field of the URL redirect action and use the configurations outlined below for your success, termination, and over-quota redirects:

https://util.fuelcyclecore.com/util/surveyGizmo/redirectProxy (US servers) https://util.fuelcyclecore-ca.com/util/surveyGizmo/redirectProxy (Canada servers) https://util.fuelcyclecore.uk/util/surveyGizmo/redirectProxy (UK servers)

Success Redirect Configuration

• URL Variable:
  • Under “URL Variable” put: redirect_url
  • Under “Variable Name” put: redirectUrl
• Static Value:
  • Under “Variable Name” put: qualified
  • Under “Default Value (opt)” put: true

Failure/Overquota Redirect Configuration

• URL Variable
  • Under “URL Variable” put: redirect_url
  • Under “Variable Name” put: redirectUrl
• Static Value 1
  • Under “Variable Name” put: qualified
  • Under “Default Value (opt)” put: false
• Static Value 2
  • Under “Variable Name” put: reason
  • Under “Default Value (opt)” put: LOGIC or OVER_QUOTA
• Static Value 3
  • Under “Variable Name” put: disqualifiedStep
  • Under “Default Value (opt)” put: {customText}

The red text portion in the Failure and Over Quota Redirects can be changed so that you can track disqualification numbers through the FC platform dashboards. These designations should not include spaces and typically should be written in all caps. (e.g. HOUSEHOLD_INCOME)

Duplicate Protection

Duplicate protection can be accessed through Tools > Response Settings. The following duplicate protection settings should be used on Alchemer screeners:

• PANEL/NON-CRM RECRUIT: Enable duplicate protection on any panel and non-CRM recruits.
  • Use IP-based for non-employee communities
  • Use cookie-based for employee communities
    * Cookie-based is used for employee communities because a company’s VPN may cause multiple members to have similar IP addresses
• CRM RECRUIT: Disable all duplicate protection for a CRM recruit – no IP, no cookies

Profile (P2) Points

After programming the screener, it is recommended to import it as soon as possible so that the Community Manager can start creating P2 Points.  Please contact your Fuel Cycle account team if you would like a Profile Point template to better communicate which questions should be implemented as P2 Points.

P2 Points built off of Alchemer surveys do not support carry forward or piping text. To achieve this same function in the Alchemer survey, use display logic on the answer options to be able to pull all text into the P2 Engine.

Quotas

Set target percentages for different demographics such as age group or gender so that they get a better understanding of how those groups respond to certain topics or products. Additionally, screener quotas save time by eliminating unnecessary surveys and ensuring that only qualified respondents are included in the sample size.

Setting Quotas

To set up quotas, please refer to the link below that pertains to your survey tool:

• Qualtrics
• Alchemer

When setting up your quotas, you can deal with over-quotas in a couple of different ways. Setting quotas manually is the recommended method because it’s based on active, true members and, therefore, reflects the most accurate community composition numbers. 

• Manually (count-based): Set quotas as a count (with no associated survey action when the quota is met) and manually set up certain subgroups in your survey to term as necessary.
• Automatically: Set quotas to close automatically within the survey flow when a maximum is reached.

If setting quotas to automatically OQ respondents, it is always best to set your quotas slightly higher than your target community composition. The reasoning is that the number of screener completes will almost always be higher than the number of Active True members in the community. The recommended buffer is +10-20% per quota.

If using census-based quotas, refer to the US Census Bureau website for the demographic breakouts.

Setting Over Quotas Manually

When setting quotas, you will need to work with the Community Manager and Field Associate to keep track of Active True member counts. Once a quota has been met, you will need to program the over-quota point into the screener.

Make sure to pause recruitment (if possible) before programming the overquota point. Otherwise, respondents who enter the screener during programming will be taking an incomplete version of the screener.

Setting Over Quotas Automatically

When setting your over quotas to automatically close, you will need to be careful when setting your over-quota logic.

Below is an example of incorrect quota logic. In this example, once the All Canada quota is filled up then all respondents will start to term regardless of which quota they fill.

Below is an example of correctly set up quota logic. Based on this logic, respondents will term if they reside in Canada when the “All Canada” quota is met.

Screener Programming Checklist

Below is a quick checklist that should help you as you program and test your screener. Happy screening!

• Are redirects correctly in place? Are they configured correctly to track term rates?
• Are all terms programmed correctly?
• Are appropriate duplicate protection settings being used?
• Are quotas set up correctly?
• If recruiting from a general population study, have you discussed quotas and targeting with your Fuel Cycle account team?
• Are appropriate question types being used for profile points?
• If Javascript is being used, is it working correctly?