> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://greatquestion.co/support/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Participation States

> Understand each participant status and what it tells you about where someone is in a study.

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.                                                                                                           |

<Note>
  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.
</Note>

## 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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