Recruiting Participants from Koji's Panel

When you do not have a list of people to interview, Koji can recruit them for you. Pick your markets, describe who you want to hear from, review supply and price, and launch. Matched panel respondents take your interview by text or voice, and their answers land in your results next to everyone else's.

Before you start

• Publish your study. Panel respondents need a live study to land on. Until it is published, the Panel recruit tab asks you to publish first.
• Launching needs a paid plan. Anyone can build an audience, check supply and pricing, and save a draft. Launching a recruitment is available on paid plans.
• Have credits available. Panel respondents are paid for in credits, and Koji sets credits aside when a recruitment launches. See Pricing and credits.
• Add screening questions to the study if you need them. Screening questions belong to the study (Studio, then Questions), so they apply to every panel recruitment. They are available on studies created from September 2026.
• The study owner manages panel recruitments. The person who owns the study creates, launches and manages its recruitments.

Start a recruitment

1. Open your study and go to Interviews.
2. Select the Panel recruit tab.
3. Click New recruitment.

Setup has three steps: Size & markets, Who to interview, and Review & launch.

1. Size & markets

• Markets. Choose one or more countries. Each market comes with its panel language, for example "Germany · German". If you pick several markets, Koji creates one recruitment per market and splits your interview goal between them.
• Interviews. How many completed interviews you want.
• Interview mode. Choose whether panel respondents take the interview by text, by voice, or can pick either. You can narrow the modes your study offers, but not add new ones. A text-only recruitment keeps every interview at 1 credit.

Make sure your study can interview people in the language of each market you pick.

2. Who to interview

Type your audience into Who do you want to interview? in plain language, for example "parents in the US aged 30 to 45 who work full time". Koji turns it into targeting criteria from the panel's own profiling questions, which you can review and edit. To add a criterion yourself, click Add targeting criteria and search Panel questions.

• Quotas. For criteria with several answers, choose Whoever responds, Equal, or Custom to control the mix of respondents.
• What the panel cannot target. If part of your description has no matching panel question, Koji tells you. Cover it with a screening question on your study instead.
• Screening questions. Your study's screening questions are shown here for reference. People who do not qualify are screened out and sent back to the panel. Each screening question narrows the audience, which can raise the price.

Profiling questions vary by market. Consumer and general work profiles are the best fit. For highly specialized professionals, such as medical specialists or senior executives in one industry, recruit from your own list or a specialist recruiter and send them a personalized interview link.

3. Review & launch

Before anything launches, the review step shows what you are about to buy:

• Feasibility. Whether the panel has enough matching people (deep, limited or tight supply), overall and per market.
• Incidence rate and interview length, which drive the price.
• Panel cost. The price per completed interview in credits, and the estimated panel total.
• Interview credits. The normal interview charge, shown separately, and an estimated total for the whole recruitment.
• Held at launch. The credits Koji sets aside when the recruitment starts.

Then choose how to go:

• Start soft launch. On by default. Koji fields around 10% of your goal first and pauses, so you can read the first interviews and check the real incidence rate. Then Release the rest, or Stop here instead.
• Launch hire. Fields the full goal straight away.
• Save draft. Keeps the setup so you can edit or launch it later.

A recruitment stays open for responses for up to 7 days.

Pricing and credits

• Panel price. Each completed panel respondent costs a set number of credits (1 credit = €1). The price depends on the market, how hard your audience is to reach, and the interview length, and you see it before you launch.
• Interview credits. Each interview also uses the normal interview credits: 1 for text, 3 for voice. The quality gate applies to interview credits. The panel price applies to every completed panel respondent.
• Credits set aside at launch. When a recruitment launches, Koji reserves credits for it. This is a reservation, not a charge: when the recruitment finishes, unused credits go back to your balance, and any extra completes are charged. Your credit history shows these as panel recruitment entries.
• Price changes. If the panel's price per interview rises while a recruitment is live, it pauses and asks you to Approve new budget and resume or Stop and keep what we have.

Monitor and manage recruitments

Each recruitment is a row on the Panel recruit tab showing its market, progress and status: Draft, Live, Paused, Review test batch, Approve new price, Complete, Ended early or Failed.

Use the ⋯ menu to:

• Pause or Resume a live recruitment.
• Stop a recruitment. You can relaunch it later if its goal and end date have not been reached.
• Relaunch a completed recruitment.
• Edit or Launch a draft.

Panel respondents appear in Responses with everyone else. Your study's response limit counts panel and self-recruited interviews together.

What respondents experience

Panel respondents arrive at your study from the panel and skip the lead form. They answer your screening questions, if you have any, then take the interview in the modes you allowed. When they finish, or if they are screened out, Koji sends them back to the panel automatically.

Report a low-quality respondent

If a completed panel interview looks fraudulent or low effort, open the respondent's ⋯ menu or detail panel and choose Report respondent. Pick a reason: suspected fraud, straight-lining, speeder, poor quality, ghost complete, or inconsistent answers. You can report a complete until the 25th of the month after it was completed.

Related

• Managing Research Participants
• Personalized Interview Links
• Research Screener Questions
• Plan Comparison Guide