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Integrating your Own Screener
Integrating your Own Screener

Best Practices on Creation of a Screener Survey, and Usage on our Platform

Jonny avatar
Written by Jonny
Updated over a year ago

So you've got a structure for your test, but you want to be able to filter your Participants to ensure they're the right fit. That's where a screener survey comes in. There are several tools out there, but how to choose? What to ask? We'll help with that. See below for handy tips, best practices and recommendations based on our experience.

What Features should you look for in a Survey Creation Tool?

We've found that the following facilities are best suited to this kind of survey.

  • The ability to ask questions in different formats as needed such as open questions, radio button, multi-select checkboxes, radio matrix grid etc.

  • The ability to disqualify participants when they are no longer eligible for the playtest.

  • Redirection from the screener survey to the test or alternative destinations (such as a landing page or directly into the playtest)

  • Tools to easily gather and organise survey responses for review, for example, if you wish to manually choose participants to take part rather than rely on the survey to filter.

Recommended Screener Survey Tools

Over our time recruiting, we've tried several different services; below are the best options in our experience.

  • Alchemer (Formerly Survey Gizmo) - Currently used by Go Testify

  • Survey Monkey

  • Google forms

NOTE: If using a survey service that shortens links (such as Google Forms) please ensure that you use the full survey link, as a shortened link redirect will not function correctly within our app.
​
​To find this, either check with the service you are using, or go to your shortened link, then when the survey loads, use the Web Address in your browser as the link for that survey.

Best Practices / Tips & Tricks

Over time, we've built our knowledge to understand how to recruit Participants efficiently, and would like to share some of the key learnings from our experiences.

  1. Only ask the relevant questions -

    • We advise against wasting your participant's time with questions irrelevant to the test. This can discourage people from taking part at a crucial early stage.

    • Keep the survey concise while also providing all necessary information to the participant.

  2. Remove Participants at the point they are no longer eligible -

    • Screener tools can Disqualify/Remove participants once they answer in a way that makes them ineligible for the playtest. Think about the positioning of your questions with this in mind.

      • Don't have Participants complete a full screener if they are not eligible based on their answers to the early questions.

      • Example: If playtest requires participants have an Android device and a participant answers they only have an iOS device, you should disqualify them from proceeding at that point.

  3. Don't lead your Participants

    • Make sure Participants aren't aware of what kind of participant you are looking for as this can influence Participants to lie on their screener to get into the playtest.

      • Make sure your questions aren't leading.

      • If you are looking for Participants with experience with a specific game, ensure they don't know or suspect that before answering the question.

    • Examples;

      • Do you have any experience with the game Call of duty: Warzone❌

        • Participants will assume you are looking for experience so will answer affirmatively even if this isn't the truth.

      • What is your experience with the following games ✅

        • God of War (Scale: 'No Experience' up to 'Play Everyday')

        • Battlefield (Scale: 'No Experience' up to 'Play Everyday')

        • Flight Simulator (Scale: 'No Experience' up to 'Play Everyday')

        • Call of duty: Warzone (Scale: 'No Experience' up to 'Play Everyday')

        • Mario Kart 8: (Scale: 'No Experience' up to 'Play Everyday')

  4. Try to find Participants who are cheating

    • Some Participants assume they can be eligible for playtests by saying they like playing all games - in our experience, this is unlikely.

      • You can use disqualifying logic to find these Participants by having the screener recognize a Participant who has said they play every title actively.

      • If a Participant answers that they play every title 'Every day' we recommend Disqualifying logic to remove them based on cheating in the survey.

        • Note; It may very well be true that a Participant plays all games on your survey every day, but we would recommend multiple varied genres of titles to counterbalance this and find the suspect answers.

    • You can also put fake games on your questions to validate the above and confirm the Participant is answering honestly.

      • Suppose they say they play a fake game. In that case, they are lying or not paying attention.

      • Either way, we recommend against encouraging these Participants to participate in your test, as they usually don't provide reliable feedback/insight.

How to Integrate a Screener Survey into your Test

Now you have a screener survey. What's next?

We've built our platform to help you as much as possible, and a part of this is the integration and distribution of the screening method you have chosen. To do this;

  1. In the test set-up, simply place your screener URL into the 'External Screener URL' Field at the bottom of the test set-up page

  2. When the test is live, you have several methods for sending the screener out through the platform

    • Method 1 -

      • Click "Invite Players"

      • Add CSV list of Participants to invite field

      • Make sure 'Invite players to take part (Inc Screener)' is ticked

      • Click send invite

      • Participants will then be able to access the screener

    • Method 2 -

      • Click "Invite Players"

      • From the quick links section - click Test Screener to create a copy of the link to the invite page

      • You can use this link to give Participants access to the screener via other methods, such as SMS or Email

  1. Your screener can be used in two primary ways

    • Automatic Redirection

      • If you have set up your screener only to allow eligible Participants to reach the end of the screener, you can redirect Participants directly into the playtest if your screener supports redirect functionality. If this is the case, your final page, or "success screen" should have the direct link to the test. You can click the "Direct to Test" option in the quick links (Method 2 above) to get this link!

    • Manual Review of Responses

      • Once you have screened Participants, you can give them access to the playtest how you see fit by providing them with the "Direct to Test" link from the quick links.

We hope this helped with your Screener Survey creation! If you have any questions or would like to chat with someone, feel free to reach out to us via the chat function at the bottom right of this page or via support@gotestify.com.

Good Luck with finding your Participants!

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