Set how many participants you need from each segment

Open a study to everyone who passes the screener and the sample fills in the order people arrive. If your panel skews female and over 55, so does your study, and the younger group you designed it around ends up with two interviews. Before quotas, Conveo could only cap total responses, so balancing a sample meant watching completions and closing recruitment by hand.

Quotas, how it works and what it changes, no sound needed.

How it works

• Collect the attributes in your screener. For example, "What type of pet do you own?"

• Define segments. In the Recruit tab, create a quota group and build each segment from screener answers with "is any of" or "is none of" rules, joined by AND and OR.

• Set a target per segment. Min protects room for at least that many completions, Max stops admitting at the cap, and Exact does both. Set the study's response limit first.

• Conveo checks every participant. After the screener, each person joins the first segment their answers match. If that segment is full, or taking them would use slots another segment still needs, they are screened out before the interview starts.

Balance several dimensions in one study

Each quota group covers one dimension, so age and usage frequency get a group each, and a participant has to fit both. The Recruit page shows each segment filling up as completed, in progress and qualified. While the study is live you can edit rules and targets, add segments or pause a group, and completed interviews stay valid.

Research teams asked for it in five situations

These come from teams in consumer goods, food and drink, beauty, health retail, consumer tech, streaming and sportswear. We kept them anonymous.

• A mix that matches the market. Even gender splits and spread-out age bands, so the sample does not drift toward whoever answers first.

• Floors with some give. Enough people in every group, with room for a split that lands a little either side of the plan.

• The exact target consumer. Income bands, brand loyalty or device ownership, so interviews come from the buyers the brand sells to.

• Layered criteria. Age alongside ownership, or usage alongside age, handled in a single study.

• Every market and every concept. Balanced groups in each country of a multi-market study, and a comparable audience for each concept.

What this means for your research

You design the sample once and Conveo enforces it while interviews run. No spreadsheet, no closing recruitment by hand, and your analysis starts from the mix you planned.

Some limits to know. Targets steer admission and are not a guaranteed final count: Conveo counts completed interviews plus an estimate of those still underway, so someone already admitted can finish after a segment reaches its target. Use Min when going over is fine. Quotas also only filter the people who arrive. Invitations come from your panel's recruitment settings, so a hard-to-reach segment still depends on them.

Read the quotas guide.