Research Participant Vocabulary

Recruitment criteria define who is the right participant for a specific study. Criteria might include: 'uses the product at least weekly', 'manages a team of 5+ people', 'age 25-45', 'has made an online purchase in the last month'. Without clear criteria, you may end up with participants who don't represent your actual users, making the research findings invalid.

A screener is typically a short survey (5-10 questions) sent to a large pool of potential participants. Responses reveal whether each person meets the recruitment criteria. Questions may be direct ('how often do you use X?') or indirect (to avoid 'right answers'). The screener filters the pool down to qualified participants, saving everyone's time.

Incentives serve multiple purposes: they respect participants' time by compensating them fairly, they improve recruitment success rates (especially for hard-to-reach segments), and they reduce no-show rates. Without incentives, you tend to recruit only highly motivated participants (fans or critics), which biases your sample. Typical incentives range from $25-$100+ depending on session length and participant scarcity.

NDAs are used in UX research specifically when participants will see confidential or unreleased product information — pre-launch features, competitive positioning materials, or strategic roadmap concepts. The NDA is signed before the session begins. For research on existing publicly available features, an NDA is usually not required — a consent form for recording is typically sufficient.

In usability testing, the researcher's job is to observe, not to help. When a participant is confused, the researcher notes what happened (where they looked, what they tried, what they said) without guiding them to the correct path. Helping defeats the purpose — you want to observe the natural failure to understand what is unclear, so the product team can fix it. The researcher can probe ('what were you expecting to happen?') but shouldn't guide.