The questions in a screener have two conflicting goals:
When thinking about the users of your product, you will likely come up with a number of categories of ‘typical’ users. The more specific you can make your descriptions of your users, the better you will be at identifying people who match your user profile. It is important to note that job titles alone don’t fully reflect a person’s tasks, duties, or behaviors. The example below shows how you can turn user traits into screener questions.
User trait | Screener question |
---|---|
Takes long vacations | What is the average duration of your personal trips?
|
Takes multiple vacations each year | How many personal trips have you taken in the past year?
|
Takes vacations with other people | Who do you travel with on the majority of your personal trips?
|
Makes all the travel arrangements | For personal trips, who is responsible for making the travel arrangements (flight, hotel, etc.)?
|
Prefers to stay at high-end resorts | For personal trips, what type of accommodations do you stay at the most? High-end resort (Auburge, Fairmont, etc.)
|
When thinking about your screener questions, try to organize them like a funnel to narrow down participants, starting with broad questions and moving to more specific questions.
Here are some best practices when making a screener from scratch:
Final drafts of screeners at GitLab are created in Qualtrics. If you don’t have access to Qualtrics, request it. If you are using a different recruiting method or an unmoderated study platform (such as UserTesting.com), you will create the screener in those platforms.
When crafting questions, keep the following in mind:
Incorrect | Correct |
---|---|
Do you take two or more vacations per year?
|
How many personal vacations do you take per year?
|
Are you traveling with a partner, friend, or family member?
|
For this upcoming trip, who are you traveling with?
|
Incorrect | Correct |
---|---|
Where did you purchase your upcoming flight from?
|
Where did you purchase your upcoming flight from?
|
Incorrect | Correct |
---|---|
If you needed to get to a meeting on the other side of downtown, about 2 miles away, which of the following would you consider doing to get to your meeting?
|
If you needed to get to a meeting on the other side of downtown, about 2 miles away, which of the following would you consider doing to get to your meeting?
|