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

> Two ways to reach participants: bring your own, or recruit from our research panel. How to choose, and what each costs.

# Recruiting Participants

export const SampleSizeCalculator = () => {
  const [prevalence, setPrevalence] = useState(0.2);
  const [confidence, setConfidence] = useState(0.95);
  const p = Number(prevalence);
  const c = Number(confidence);
  const needed = Math.ceil(Math.log(1 - c) / Math.log(1 - p));
  const prevalenceOptions = [{
    value: 0.5,
    label: 'About half of them'
  }, {
    value: 0.33,
    label: 'About 1 in 3'
  }, {
    value: 0.2,
    label: 'About 1 in 5'
  }, {
    value: 0.1,
    label: 'About 1 in 10'
  }, {
    value: 0.05,
    label: 'About 1 in 20'
  }];
  const field = {
    width: '100%',
    padding: '0.55rem 0.7rem',
    borderRadius: '0.5rem',
    border: '1px solid var(--border, rgba(128,128,128,0.35))',
    background: 'transparent',
    color: 'inherit',
    fontSize: '0.9rem'
  };
  const label = {
    display: 'block',
    fontSize: '0.8rem',
    fontWeight: 600,
    marginBottom: '0.4rem'
  };
  return <div style={{
    border: '1px solid var(--border, rgba(128,128,128,0.35))',
    borderRadius: '0.85rem',
    padding: '1.4rem',
    margin: '1.5rem 0'
  }}>
      <div style={{
    marginBottom: '1rem'
  }}>
        <label style={label}>How common is what you're looking for?</label>
        <select value={prevalence} onChange={e => setPrevalence(Number(e.target.value))} style={field}>
          {prevalenceOptions.map(o => <option key={o.value} value={o.value}>
              {o.label}
            </option>)}
        </select>
      </div>

      <div>
        <label style={label}>What confidence do you need in your findings?</label>
        <select value={confidence} onChange={e => setConfidence(Number(e.target.value))} style={field}>
          {[0.8, 0.9, 0.95, 0.99].map(o => <option key={o} value={o}>
              {Math.round(o * 100)}%
            </option>)}
        </select>
      </div>

      <div style={{
    marginTop: '1.4rem',
    paddingTop: '1.4rem',
    borderTop: '1px solid var(--border, rgba(128,128,128,0.25))',
    textAlign: 'center'
  }}>
        <div style={{
    fontSize: '3rem',
    fontWeight: 700,
    lineHeight: 1
  }}>{needed}</div>
        <div style={{
    fontSize: '1rem',
    fontWeight: 600,
    marginTop: '0.2rem'
  }}>
          {needed === 1 ? 'interview' : 'interviews'}
        </div>
        <div style={{
    fontSize: '0.875rem',
    marginTop: '0.7rem',
    opacity: 0.75
  }}>
          to be {Math.round(c * 100)}% confident you'd hear about something affecting{' '}
          {prevalenceOptions.find(o => o.value === p).label.toLowerCase()} of your participants.
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>;
};

There are two ways to get participants into a study: **bring your own** — shortened to **BYOP** in the product and in this sidebar — or **recruit from our research panel**.

You choose which in [Step 4](/creating-a-study/setup-interview#recruiting-method), and it determines your invite options once the study is live.

<Note>
  A study is one or the other. If you want responses from both your own participants and the panel, run two studies — you'll get cleaner analysis from each anyway, since you can compare them.
</Note>

***

## Bring your own participants (BYOP)

You already know who you want to talk to — your customers, your users, people on a list you control. You handle the recruiting; we run the interviews.

Three ways to get them in:

| Method                                                 | How it works                               | Best for                                     |
| ------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------- |
| [**Share a study link**](/recruiting/share-link)       | You get a URL and send it however you like | **Most bring-your-own studies — start here** |
| [**Send email invites**](/recruiting/invite-customers) | You add addresses and we email them        | Larger lists, when you want delivery tracked |
| [**Embed a widget**](/recruiting/embed-widget)         | Put the study inside your product          | Catching people mid-experience               |

### Why the study link is the default here

A study link keeps the invitation coming from **you**. It arrives in your voice, in the channel your customer already knows you from, alongside whatever context makes them want to help — an account manager's note, a line in your newsletter, a reply in an existing thread.

That matters twice over. Response rates are better when the ask comes from someone the person already has a relationship with. And you keep control of that relationship, rather than handing a slice of it to a vendor they've never heard of.

Use email invites when the list is long enough that sending by hand is impractical, or when you want the invited-and-completed status tracked for you.

***

## Research panel

You don't have the people, or you need people who aren't your customers. Two options here, and the right one comes down to how common your target is.

The panel fields in **58 countries** across the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa — see [Where we recruit](/recruiting/research-panel#where-we-recruit) for the list. Niche recruiting isn't limited to that list; a hard-to-reach geography is one of the things it's for.

| How common your audience is                                             | Use                                                                             | Turnaround                                                 |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| More than **1 in 5** people qualify                                     | [Recruit from our panel](/recruiting/research-panel#recruit-from-our-panel)     | Usually within 24 hours                                    |
| Between **1 in 10 and 1 in 5**                                          | [Recruit from our panel](/recruiting/research-panel#recruit-from-our-panel)     | Longer than 24 hours                                       |
| Fewer than **1 in 10** — B2B roles, executives, low-incidence consumers | [Recruit a niche audience](/recruiting/research-panel#recruit-a-niche-audience) | Quote within 24 hours, then a recruiting lead time in days |

The number in that first column is your audience's *incidence rate* — the share of the general population who'd qualify for your study.

You don't need to calculate it precisely. The question to ask is: **if I stopped 100 random people, how many would qualify?** "People who've bought running shoes in the last year" is a lot of them. "People who own a drone" is a few. "VPs of Finance at companies over 500 people" is approximately none, and that's a niche recruit.

<Tip>
  Screeners narrow an audience; they don't create one. If your screener would disqualify 95 out of 100 panel members, you're not screening — you're looking for a niche audience, and asking the panel for it will just take a long time and return thin results.
</Tip>

***

## What it costs

|                           | Cost                                                                                                                              |
| ------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Your own participants** | Nothing beyond credits. Optionally [pay them a reward](/managing-your-study/study-actions#enable-rewards), \$5–\$400, your choice |
| **Our panel**             | **\$30 per participant**, billed only on quality completes                                                                        |
| **Niche audience**        | Quoted individually — most land between \$50 and \$500 per complete                                                               |

Credits are charged for every interview regardless of how the participant got there. See [Billing and credits](/resources/billing-and-credits).

***

## How many participants do you need?

Whichever lane you're in, the number comes from the same place: how common the thing you're looking for is, and how confident you need to be that you'd have heard about it.

<SampleSizeCalculator />

Most studies are smaller than the confidence people want from them. Ten interviews feels thorough — and for anything affecting fewer than 1 in 5 participants, it isn't.

<Card title="How this is calculated" icon="calculator" href="/resources/sample-size">
  The reasoning, the reference tables, and what to do when you need a proportion rather than a discovery.
</Card>

***

## Screening participants

Whichever lane you're in, [screener questions](/creating-a-study/setup-interview#screener-questions-and-targeting-attributes) qualify people before they reach the interview. Standard attributes — age, gender, location, household income — are one click, and you can write custom questions with disqualifying answers.

For panel studies, screeners are what the panel matches against. For your own participants, they're a safety net against the wrong person following a forwarded link.

***

## Best practices

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Say how long it takes">
    People abandon an interview that runs longer than they were told. Put the real number in the invitation.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Say why them">
    "We're talking to customers who switched plans this year" outperforms "we'd value your feedback." Specific asks feel less like spam and more like being asked to help.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Watch your response rate, not just your count">
    Compare invites sent against calls completed on the dashboard. A low rate is usually the invitation, not the study.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Consider a reward for your own participants">
    Not always necessary for engaged customers, but it moves response rates on longer studies and with busy audiences.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

***

## Next steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Share a study link" icon="link" href="/recruiting/share-link">
    The recommended way to reach your own participants
  </Card>

  <Card title="Research panel" icon="users" href="/recruiting/research-panel">
    Panel recruiting and niche audiences
  </Card>
</CardGroup>