Recruitment and links
Choose who a study recruits: through Underheard, or your people. The links that bring each person in.
Two ways in, one at a time
A study recruits through Underheard, which finds respondents on the Underheard panel, or from your people: the customers, members or staff you bring. The choice at the top of Recruit, Recruit via Underheard or Your people, decides what the page shows: the audience rules, quotas and panel request for the first, the list, upload, invitations and integrations for the second. It can change until a plan or a launch is built on it.
| Path | What to check |
|---|---|
| Recruit via Underheard | The audience rules, the quotas, the price per interview and the time to fill. |
| Your people | A list you have permission to use, contact details, segment labels, and the channel you will send links through. |
| Study link | Who can receive it, screening, and the risk of uncontrolled forwarding. |
A study whose plan already recruits from both, or a panel study with people on its list, shows both and reads Both at the top. Your people never take a panel place, and a panel order never makes the study read as complete on their account. The study link and the test link are on every launched study.
Upload your own list
Upload a CSV or Excel list on Recruit, confirm which columns hold the name, phone and email, and read the import summary. Every other column becomes a segment you can compare in Fieldwork and Results. Supply a country code for phone numbers written without one.
- Check the added, duplicate and left-out counts before continuing.
- Keep one person once. Repeated entries are not a larger sample.
- Prepare personal links after launch, from the same section or over the API.
- Download the links as a file, or send the invitation and up to two reminders from the platform.
A list holds up to 10,000 people per study and is yours: download it or delete it at any time. People can also be posted as JSON; see the REST API.
Personal links
A personal link is a signed link for one person on your list. It greets them by first name, admits them once, and returns them to their own interview if they open it again. Links are prepared after launch and stay valid for seven days; prepare again to reissue expired ones. Handle them as private access links.
The link for one person, in the Share the study panel, takes a name and gives you that person's link to paste anywhere. The person joins your list with the name only.
The study link and the test link
The study link is one address for everyone, with copy, a QR code and open. Each person who opens it and presses Continue becomes their own respondent; opening it alone writes nothing, so a link preview in a messaging app never creates one. Each browser counts once. The link can be turned off and on again with the same address, or replaced so the old address stops working. While fieldwork is paused it says so; once closed it admits nobody.
The test link is for your team. Each Continue runs a full interview as a test respondent that no count, quota, result, report, export or billing ever sees; Fieldwork lists the test interviews separately so you can read them. It works once the study is launched. Before that, use Preview on Design.
The Underheard panel
A panel order asks Underheard to recruit to your audience rules and quotas. Recruit shows the price per interview, priced from what the panel charges for your audience, and the time to fill before you launch; screen-outs are never charged. Panel respondents arrive through a signed entry link and are admitted by their panel id against the quotas. The order is locked at launch; a new wave on another audience is a new study.
For passthrough identifiers and outcome redirects, agree the provider contract and test the complete, screen-out, quota-full and interrupted paths. A working entry link alone does not prove the provider will accept an outcome.
Review before contact
Confirm consent, audience eligibility, quotas, timing and budget. Check cooldowns and opt-outs for an owned audience. Saving a recruitment plan, uploading a list and sending invitations are separate actions.
If a connection is unavailable or an estimate is unclear, pause that path and ask the team. See Integration planning.