Online Panels Overview
What's on this page
About Online Panels
Qtip: Panels are only available for survey project types.
A panel is a group of participants who have been recruited to provide feedback on a research topic. You can define targeting criteria and launch your research study to this audience. For example, let’s say you’re launching a product designed for pet owners and would like to gather feedback on the early concepts. You can use a panel to send your survey to only pet owners, enabling you to quickly collect accurate and relevant feedback without the hassle of finding these individuals yourself.
Qtip: Only panels costing up to 15,000 USD can be purchased online using the steps on this page. For panels exceeding this price, please reach out to your Account Executive or Account Services.
Attention: This feature is not available for customers in the FedRAMP environment.
Video Walkthrough
Need help getting started with online panels? Check out this 2-minute video walkthrough:
Preparing a Survey for Online Panels
Follow the below steps to get your survey ready for distribution via an online panel:
Qtip: You do not need to ask any template questions in your survey to capture respondent demographic data. If you select “age” in your template, then you will automatically collect age values in your dataset. If you want to ask the question in a particular way or with particular answer options, you can re-ask it in your survey with the desired format. This custom version will not contribute to quotas for panel eligibility.
Custom Ranges for Targeting Criteria
If you are using numeric targeting criteria such as Age or Household Income, you can set custom ranges for the values that will pass your screening question.
Example: If you want to target respondents in specific income brackets, you can create custom ranges for the “Household Income” criterion.
After enabling custom ranges, enter your desired values in the text boxes. Values must be a whole number, and the values within ranges cannot overlap.
Click Add range to add a range, or click the trash can icon to delete a range. You can have a maximum of 6 ranges for each criterion.
When you use custom ranges for your criteria, special embedded data fields will be added to your survey flow when your panel launches.
Qtip: It is possible to have gaps in your ranges, as respondents who fit into the gaps will be filtered out.
Qtip: For the Age criterion values must be between 18-99, and each range must include at least 5 years. For the Household Income criterion values must be between $0-999,999, and reach range must include at least $10,000.
Quantitative Panels
Quantitative panels contain participants who match certain demographics from commonly sampled segments of the population for a specific survey or study. You can build your quantitative panel demographics from scratch, or use a customizable template to get started.
To learn more, see our Quantitative Panels page.
Qualitative Panels
Qualitative panels contain participants who are comfortable engaging in complex studies while giving detailed feedback. Participants in qualitative panels are not anonymous, and come with attached information.
To learn more, see our Qualitative Panels page.
Synthetic Panels
Synthetic panels are powered by a first party proprietary AI model developed here at Qualtrics. Our synthetic panel is trained on thousands of responses from a variety of demographic backgrounds in order to more accurately predict how certain populations would respond to a survey.
To learn more, see our Synthetic Panels page.
User-Made Templates
If you have access to panels, you can create panel templates, allowing you to easily reuse the same panel configuration across multiple distributions.
When creating a new panel, you can choose to save that panel as a template.
Once your panel template is saved, you can use it for your survey and share it with other users in your organization.
Payment Options
You can enter payment details to pay for your online panel immediately, or you can choose to generate an invoice and pay later.
Subscription and Incentive Credits
Credits – also known as Edge Audiences – offer a way for you to set a budget for panels without having to get separate panel purchases budgeted and approved. Instead, you buy all the credits you need at once, to use at your leisure. You can also add more credits as needed.
Subscription credits can be used to pay for any type of panel, human or synthetic. They are the only way to purchase synthetic panels. Subscription credits can be used to pay for the recruitment of human qualitative panels, but cannot be used for incentive payouts.
Incentive credits are funded and tracked separately from subscription credits. Incentive credits are used to budget incentive payments to panelists for human qualitative panels. These credits can be used as-needed.
Both subscription and incentive credits expire after 12 months.
You can only purchase subscription or incentive credits from your Account Executive.
Qtip: By default, credits are shared across the organization (brand). Credits can be budgeted or restricted by division using Division Subscription and Incentive Credit Balance.
You can also limit which users have access to online panels with the Access Online Panels user permission. Credits cannot be allocated to individual users.
Qtip: Brand Administrators can track their organization’s subscription and incentive credit consumption using the subscription and incentive credit admin report.
Invoice
In the Invoice tab, enter the information of the company or person that you would like to send the invoice to.
Once generated, a PDF of the invoice and a private payment URL will be sent to the email address that was entered. This email will come from Stripe. Click Pay this invoice to pay your invoice on Stripe. You can also share the payment URL with another party.
Enter your payment information on Stripe and select Pay. Your panel will be launched after successful payment.
Qtip: The panel will not launch until the invoice is paid. See Managing Panels for more information.
Attention: The invoice will expire after 30 days if unpaid.
Qtip: Invoices can only be paid through the Stripe payment link provided by the panel tool. Online Panels is not supported by other Qualtrics invoice and payment systems. If a payment is mistakenly made through another system, email invoices@qualtrics.com for help.
Other Payment Methods
In the last tab, there are 2 options you can use to pay for your panel:
US bank account: Set up an electronic transfer of funds from your bank account. This method uses Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments. For more information, see ACH Payments.
Attention: ACH payments can take 1-3 business days to process. Your panel will not launch until the payment is processed.
Qtip: This payment method uses Stripe for verification.
- Card: Pay using a credit or debit card.
How Panels Change Your Survey
Once you purchase a panel, your survey will be automatically updated to make sure your panel’s data is collected correctly. These changes happen in your project’s survey flow.
After creating a panel, you’ll notice the following additions to your survey flow:
- A new branch called “Online Samples API – All Fields” at the top of the survey flow, which includes the panel embedded data used to track respondent data from the panel supplier.
- A new security branch at the bottom of the survey flow to ensure panel security.
- When the panel is closed, the security branch will automatically be deleted from the survey flow. The “All Fields” branch will remain so that you can use the embedded data fields in your analysis.
If you launch another panel on the same survey, any new fields will be added to the existing “All Fields” branch. The security branch will also be re-added while the new panel is active.
Qtip: Existing fields are not duplicated. Only new fields are added.
Attention: Do not edit these branches or their contents at any time. Do not edit your survey while panel response collection is in progress.
Managing Panels
After you’ve requested the panel and your payment is processed, your panel will be created. You can then click on the panel to view more information about the panel’s status, expected end time, number of collected responses, and more.
After selecting the panel, a window will open that displays the following information about your panel:
- Survey: The name of the survey being used for this panel.
- Status: The panel’s status. Possible statuses include:
Draft - not launched: The panel is still a draft and can be edited. It has not been launched, was not paid for, and has never collected responses.
Qtip: If your panel is a draft, click the Edit panel button to edit it.
- Awaiting payment: If you’ve chosen to pay later with an invoice, this will be your panel’s status while waiting for payment. The panel is not available for editing. The expiration date and link to the invoice are provided underneath the status.
- Awaiting approval: This status means the panel has not been launched and has never collected responses. It requires approval to move forward and has not yet been granted that approval. The panel is not available for editing. This status only appears for panels managed by the Qualtrics Implementations team.
- Approval declined: This status means the panel has not been launched, was not paid for, and has never collected responses. It required approval to move forward and was not granted that approval. This status only appears for panels managed by the Qualtrics Implementations team.
- Processing payment: The panel’s payment is processing and we are waiting for validation before launching the panel. The panel is not available for editing. This status does not apply to card payments since that payment method is immediately processed.
- Payment failed: The selected payment method failed (ACH, credits, etc), or the invoice link is expired.
- Launch failed: The payment was successful but the panel failed to launch for an unexpected reason. The panel is not available for editing. Please contact Qualtrics Technical Support for assistance.
- Closed: The panel is closed and no new responses can be collected via the panel. This status means the panel project is fully concluded, all financial books are locked, nothing can be refunded, and nothing can be edited in this project. All panel details and data are still visible in the panel dashboard.
- Collecting: The panel is currently open to collect responses. The panel is not available for editing.
- Collection paused: The panel has been intentionally paused from receiving new responses by you or another user. The panel is not available for editing. Pausing a panel does not extend the fielding window. The panel will stop collecting responses 20 days after launching.
- Collection ended: The panel has stopped collecting new responses but is not yet completely closed. The panel will not collect more responses unless you take an action, if one is possible. The most common option at this time is reconciliation to replace low quality responses. The panel is not available for editing.
Qtip: If you believe your panel and survey are set up correctly but you collected 0 responses, please contact Qualtrics Support for assistance.
Qtip: This status may also appear if the panel supplier has closed response collection. In that case, a banner will appear telling you to contact technical support.
- Launch time: The date and time that the panel was created.
Expected end time: The requested date and time for the panel to be completed (i.e., when the goal number of responses is collected).
Qtip: While the expected end time is the target, it is possible that the panel may not complete within this timeframe. The panel will remain open for a maximum of 20 days to attempt to collect all responses.
- Fielding window: The number of days between the launch time and expected end date.
- Distribution Id: The ID of the distribution. This value will also appear on your purchase receipt.
- Total responses: The number of responses collected and the goal number of responses.
- Survey length (LOI): The observed survey length measured in the live panel compared to the predicted survey length.
Incidence rate (IR): The observed incidence rate measured in the live panel compared to the predicted incidence rate.
Qtip: If your observed LOI and IR are performing worse than predicted and your panel collection looks unlikely to collect all responses, we recommend pausing response collection and creating a new panel with updated parameters to get new costs and feasibility.
Attention: If your panel did not successfully fulfill all responses, we recommend pausing the panel and configuring a new one with the observed IR and LOI to recalculate the cost and feasibility. Loosening quota requirements may also help improve feasibility.
Qtip: LOI, IR, and Quotas are settings available for quantitative panels, and do not apply to qualitative panels.
Quotas Tab
You can view the quotas set for your panel even before response collection is complete. Using this method, you can see the progress that’s being made to meet your demographic quotas.
- Count: How many responses fitting this quota have been collected so far.
- Target: How many responses should be collected for the quota by the end of the panel.
Pausing a Panel
Qtip: Panels cannot be manually closed; instead, they automatically close 7 days after response collection has ended (i.e., 27 days after the panel was launched).
You can pause response collection for an open panel at any time. This does not immediately close the panel; it simply stops new responses from being collected. If the fielding window is still open, you can resume response collection for the panel.
Attention: Once a panel is closed, you cannot edit it and it will no longer collect any new responses. If there are any unfulfilled responses, a prorated refund will automatically be issued to the credit card used to purchase the panel, minus associated processing fees.
Viewing Panel Data
Qtip: Panel data is not scrubbed for anonymity or sensitive data. This service can be provided by the Qualtrics Research Services team for an additional cost. If you do not have a research representative, reach out to your Account Executive.
You can view your responses by navigating to the Data & Analysis tab of your survey. Responses to screening questions are added to survey responses as embedded data. The embedded data field names use the naming scheme: “_os_api_variable.”
Example: If asking respondents for their age, then you will have an embedded data field called “_os_api_age.” If asking respondents for their gender, then you will have an embedded data field called “_os_api_gender.”
There are a few additional embedded data fields for every survey that uses online panels:
- _os_api_panel_id: The ID of the distribution. This will match your distribution ID for the panel project.
- _os_api_vendor: Third party panel vendor used to source the panel respondents.
- _os_api_participant_id: This field is only available for qualitative panels. This is a unique ID for each participant.
- gc: This stands for “good complete.” A value of “1” means the respondent fully completed the survey and will be paid for their time.
- psid: A unique value that the panel supplier assigns to the research participant to anonymously identify them.
- transaction_id: A unique value that the panel supplier assigns to associate the survey session with the research participant.
- pureSpectrumRedirectUrl: Research participants are redirected back to the panel supplier portal on completion of the survey. This field is only included for templated (quantitative) panels.
- pureSpectrumSignatureValue: A security measure to avoid fraud. This field is only included for templated (quantitative) panels.
Additional fields are available depending on the demographic criteria used for your panel:
- _os_api_gender: The respondent’s gender. Possible values include:
- Male
- Female
- Prefer not to say
- _os_api_hispanic: Indicates if the respondent is Hispanic. This field is only included for templated (quantitative) panels. Possible values include:
- Yes
- No
- _os_api_ethnicity: The respondent’s ethnicity. Possible values include:
- White
- Black or African American
- Asian
- Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
- American Indian or Alaska Native
- Other
- _os_api_region: The respondent’s region in the United States. This field is only included for templated (quantitative) panels. Possible values include:
- Northeast
- Midwest
- South
- West
- _os_api_age: The age range of the participant. Values include:
- 18-24
- 25-34
- 35-44
- 45-54
- 55-64
- 65+
- _os_api_age_range: The age range of the participant when using a custom range. Values will be what you defined when setting up your targeting criteria. This field is only available for quantitative or synthetic panels.
- _os_api_household_income_range: The income range of the participant when using a custom range. Values will be what you defined when setting up your targeting criteria. This field is only available for quantitative or synthetic panels.
- _os_api_industry: The industry the participant is in. This field is only available for qualitative panels and for quantitative (templated) panels that are relevant, such as job-focused ones.
- _os_api_job_function: The type of job the panelist has. This field is only available for qualitative panels.
- _os_api_company_size: The size of the company the panelist works for. This field is only available for qualitative panels.
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