Participants & Panels: Overview

Overview

Once your study is set up, you need participants to respond to it before you can collect any results. This article explains the two ways to get participants in Decode, and how to decide which one fits your situation.

What is a panel?

A panel is a pool of people you can recruit as participants for your research, without having to find and contact them yourself. Instead of relying only on your own contacts or customer list, a panel gives you access to people who match the criteria you set, such as country, age, or gender, so you can get responses from the right kind of person even if you don't already know anyone who fits.

Your two options

When you publish a study, a Choose Audience Source screen appears with two options:

• Use Decode Audience Cloud - Recruit participants via Decode's integrated network of global panel providers, with access to over 50M+ verified respondents. Use this when you don't have your own audience to reach, or when you need people who match specific criteria you can't easily find yourself. This option uses credits, and your Remaining credits are shown before you confirm.
• Self - Recruit — Bring your own participants. Generate a study link to share via email, social media, or your own database. Use this when you already have an audience you can reach directly, such as your customers, colleagues, or a community you're part of. This option is Free to use.

Select an option and click Confirm to continue.

You're not limited to one option

You can select Self - Recruit first and share your own link, and can also add a Decode Audience Cloud panel to reach more people, or a different kind of audience, for the same study. 

From the below screen, you can also use the other option if needed. You can select Self - Recruit first and share your own link, and can also add a Decode Audience Cloud panel to reach more people, or a different kind of audience, for the same study.

What to do next

If you're bringing your own participants, see Bring Your Own Panel (BYOP). If you want to recruit through Decode's panel network, see Decode Panel. To manage the credits used for panel recruitment, see Audience Credits.