Reserve participants

With the help of confirmations and reminders, we try to minimize the number of dropouts as much as possible. Unfortunately, we cannot prevent them entirely. That’s why we recommend scheduling one reserve for every five participants.

What is a dropout?

A participant is considered a dropout when one of the following situations occurs:

• Late arrival: A participant is more than 10 minutes late and you decide to cancel the session.
• Last-minute cancellation: A participant cancels less than 48 hours before the start of the study — for example, due to illness or other personal circumstances.
• No-show: A participant does not show up.
• Technical issue: The participant experiences a technical problem with their device and is unable to resolve it within 10 minutes.

No costs will be charged for dropouts.

Option 1 - Include reserves (recommended)

In this case, one extra participant is recruited and scheduled for every five regular participants. The reserves are scheduled together with the regular participants. This means:

• If there are no dropouts, you will be charged for all scheduled participants (including reserves).
• If there are dropouts, the cost of those sessions will be deducted from the invoice or the corresponding credits will be refunded to your account.

For example, if you schedule 10 participants plus 2 reserves (12 in total) and all participants attend, you will be invoiced for all 12 sessions. However, if one participant drops out, the cost of that missed session will be deducted, and you will pay for 11 sessions instead.

Option 2 - Do not include reserves

You choose not to include reserves. This means we will only recruit and schedule the regular participants. If there are dropouts, you can choose one of the following options after the final scheduled session has taken place:

• Do not recruit replacements. You accept a lower sample size (n). The cost of the dropout(s) will be deducted from the invoice, or the corresponding credits will be refunded to your account.
• Recruit replacement participants. After the final session, you can inform us how many replacement sessions are needed. User Sense will then launch a new recruitment round, and the replacement sessions can be scheduled within our standard lead time of 5–10 working days.