A screener is a form that is filled out during the recruitment phase of participants in marketing or user research studies.

Its purpose is to check whether recruited individuals fit within the study’s target group, and exclude them if it’s not the case.

This is an essential step, especially if you are carrying out qualitative research – interviews, usability testing, focus groups or other. Because your sample size is quite small, it is essential you make sure you are going to meet the right people, who are going to provide you with relevant answers – otherwise you’ll end up wasting your time.

At Tandemz, this is something we notice frequently: studies that involve poorly laid out screeners usually yield inaccurate results and involve higher rates of “problem” participants – respondents who aren’t very engaged or don’t quite fit within the target group, and are therefore not relevant for the purpose of the study, or even “cheaters” who lie about their profile in order to be selected…

Prerequisite: defining the right target for your study

<aside> 🚧 It’s worth mentioning here that a prerequisite is to have clearly defined research objectives. Everything is derived from that: choice of method, choice of profiles, interview guide... Discussing this aspect in depth would make this article way too long… 😉 So we’d rather refer you to Nikki Anderson’s comprehensive article on this topic.

</aside>

Before anything else, it is imperative that you define the profile for an ideal participant. To do this, you must have a clear vision of what you are trying to gather and understand from your participants!

<aside> ✍️ Case study

Let’s say you work for a telephone operator. You are preparing an exploratory study involving a series of qualitative interviews to understand why people switch operators to change their mobile plan. Specifically, you want to find out:

Once this prerequisite has been met, the next question to ask is: what are the defining characteristics of the people you would like to interview?

There are 3 types of criteria that will help you define your target, in order of importance: