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Segment your participant data in OptimalSort
Segment your participant data in OptimalSort

Review your participants, segment results based on question response, participant ID or identifier, URL tags and categories created.

Updated over a week ago

This article tells you how to use the participant's tab to:

  • review details about your participants and their card sorts

  • include or exclude participants from your results

  • segment results based on question response, participant ID, URL tags and categories created

The participants tab displays useful information about every participant who started your card sort, and can be used to include and exclude participants and segment your data.

Understanding included/excluded and abandoned participants

Participants who complete the card sort are automatically placed in the ‘included in results’ table. Those who don’t complete all tasks (or are rejected by our recruitment panel if you've used it), are placed in the ‘excluded from results’ table.

Participants are automatically marked as 'abandoned' when they don't complete the card sort - this happens if they've exited the study or the study has timed out. By default, these participants are not included in your results. The same goes for participants who put every single card in one group, or who put each card in its own group. This is because it can skew your data and is usually an indicator that a participant is not fully engaged in the study.

How to include or exclude participants

You can exclude participants by selecting them with the checkbox and clicking the “exclude selected participants” button. This will send them to the “excluded from results” table. When you first look at your results, we recommend you review the data in this tab and remove any. You might, for example, see that a participant completed the card sort in under two minutes, and you know that if they took it seriously, it should've taken 10 minutes. Removing these participants will tighten up your results.

You'll be able to see by the percentages of cards sorted and categories created that participants haven't finished yet. If it shows 0% for both, it means no cards have been moved at all, and participants probably haven't started it.

If you use our in-app recruitment service, you'll notice that some participants in the "included" table are flagged. This happens when the tool has picked up that the participant may not have completed the study correctly, i.e. they did it too fast or too slow, put all cards in one category, or created a category for each card.

Example of what a flagged participant response looks like

If a participant is flagged, have a quick look through their data and if you want to replace them, you can do so in-app by clicking the ‘Replace participant’ button.

Create a segment using participant ID, categories created, URL tags, and question responses

You can create segments using participant ID, URL tags, categories created and question responses to organise your participant data into meaningful groups and compare trends and opportunities.

To create a new segment or edit an existing one go to the Results > Participants > Segments.

If your participants completed a screener survey or pre - or post-study questions that had pre-set answers (like multi-choice), you can segment your results based on their responses.

Select the ‘Create segment’ button and select ‘Question response’, then choose the question and response you want to filter to. You can add multiple conditions, and save the segment.

Apply a segment to your results

To select a segment to apply to your results, click on ‘All included participants’ and select your segment from the drop-down menu. This option will apply to all your results.

Tip: If you use our in-app recruitment tool, you can easily replace study participants should you need to. Read more about replacing participants in-app and our participant response flagging feature here.

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