Participation States

Participant statuses help you track where each person is in the research process. As candidates move through recruitment and into sessions, their status updates, some automatically, some by researcher action, so you can see at a glance who’s been invited, who’s scheduled, who’s finished, and who dropped off. Statuses show as colored pills on a study’s Participants tab, where you can also filter by status and see counts per status, and on candidate profiles.

The statuses

Status	Meaning
Sent screener	The candidate has been sent a screener to qualify for the study.
Applied	The candidate has applied to participate in the study.
Shortlisted	The candidate has been selected as a participant.
Invited	An invitation to actually take part has been sent.
Scheduled	The participant has been scheduled into a confirmed time slot.
Started	The participant has started your test or survey.
Completed	The participant’s participation has been completed.
No showed	The participant did not attend their scheduled session.
Removed	The participant was removed from the study.
Canceled	The participant’s scheduled participation was canceled, for one of several reasons (for example, canceled manually, by the candidate, or because the calendar event was canceled).
Opted out	The participant has opted out of participating in this particular study.

Not every status applies to every study type. Scheduled and No showed are relevant to studies with live sessions, while Started applies to tests and surveys participants complete on their own. Sent screener and Invited are easy to mix up, “Sent screener” means a qualifying screener went out, while “Invited” means the actual study invitation went out.

Manual vs. automatic changes

Some transitions happen automatically: a session left in Started for too long can revert back to invited after a configurable timeout, and candidates recruited through an external panel (Respondent or User Interviews) have their status driven by that platform’s own submissions. Everything else is a researcher action from the Participants tab’s bulk actions, shortlist, invite, schedule, mark no show, cancel, start, complete, or remove.

Status and incentives

An incentive is issued once a participation reaches Completed. Canceling a participation or marking it No showed automatically cancels any pending incentive for that person, and a participation can’t be canceled or marked no show at all once its incentive has already been redeemed.

Troubleshooting

Issue	What’s happening	How to fix
A participant disputes being marked “No showed”	This can happen with externally-sourced candidates (from a panel integration) where the researcher marked the status manually	Review the session’s booking and communication history to confirm before changing the status
An incentive wasn’t canceled after a no-show or cancellation	The incentive may have already been redeemed, which blocks status changes that would otherwise cancel it	This is expected, a redeemed incentive can’t be clawed back by changing the participation status
A participant’s status changed with no one on the team touching it	The session likely reverted from Started after sitting inactive too long, or the candidate updated their own status via an external panel	No action needed, check the study’s session timeout setting or the candidate’s external platform activity

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Research methods

Candidates & participants

Incentives

Repository

Modular study add-ons

The statuses

Manual vs. automatic changes

Status and incentives

Troubleshooting

​The statuses

​Manual vs. automatic changes

​Status and incentives

​Troubleshooting

The statuses

Manual vs. automatic changes

Status and incentives

Troubleshooting