Test participants

Test participants are people from your team who try the study before real participants do. They go through the same steps: invitation, consent form and tasks. Their answers are marked Test, so you can keep them apart.

Add a test participant

1. Go to the Participants tab and click Add participant.
2. Fill in your colleague's details. Use an email address they can open on their phone.
3. Tick Test participant.
4. Tick Send the invitation email now and click Add participant.

You can also turn an existing participant into a test participant. Click their code, tick Test participant and click Save.

The consent form must be published before you can invite anyone, test participants included.

Draft and paused studies

• Draft: only test participants can be invited and answer. Invite all only invites the test participants.
• Paused: only test participants can send answers. Everyone else sees a short note until you resume the study.
• Live: test participants keep working like everyone else.

While the study is not live, test participants see a note in the app: "Test mode: you are trying this study before it starts. Your answers are marked as a test."

Test participants also get reminders in draft and paused studies, so you can check those too. See Reminders.

Plan limits

Test participants do not count towards your plan:

• On a free trial, they do not count towards the trial's participant limit.
• On a paid plan, they do not count as active participants.

Where you see the Test mark

A Test label appears next to test participants in:

• the participant list
• each of their entries in Responses
• their highlights
• their conversation in Messages

In the CSV export, the Test participant column says Yes for their answers.

Hide test answers in Responses

Once there are test answers, the Responses tab shows a Test answers filter:

1. Choose Hidden to leave test answers out, or Only tests to see only them.
2. Click Show.

Export CSV and Download files follow the same filter. So with Hidden, test answers stay out of your exports. See Review responses.

Messages to many participants

When you write to many participants at once, test participants are left out unless you tick Include test participants. See Messages and follow-up questions.

After going live

Test answers stay in the study after it goes live. Once a test participant has joined, Remove no longer works for them. Use the Test answers filter to keep their answers out of your analysis. To get rid of them and their answers for good, use Delete P004 and their data, with their code, at the bottom of their page.

Tip: To check how a task looks without signing in as a participant, see Preview tasks.