Common participation questions
Why do participants see "This study is currently closed"?
The closed banner appears whenever the study is not ready for participation. This happens in two situations:
| Cause | What to do |
|---|---|
| The study status is set to Closed | Open the Study form, switch the status to Open, and save. |
| The study has no tasks configured | Add at least one behavioral, ancillary, or stimuli task, then save. Even if the status is Open, a taskless study is treated as closed because there is nothing for the participant to run. |
Once the study is open and contains at least one task, the participation link will load the welcome screen instead of the closed notice.
After making changes, open the participation link in a private/incognito window to verify that participants see the welcome screen.
What happens if a participant's connection drops during a session?
The platform is built to ride out short interruptions:
- It tries to reconnect automatically when the connection drops, showing the participant a brief reconnecting message.
- Work completed so far is saved as the participant goes, task by task, so a momentary glitch does not lose earlier tasks.
- Data that cannot be sent while offline is queued on the participant's device and uploaded once the connection returns.
If the participant closes the tab and does not come back, the session ends and is marked accordingly (for example, manually stopped or timed out). For unmoderated studies, reconnection is not attempted indefinitely; after a session has been interrupted for too long, it stops trying and the recording for the remainder is not captured.
How long is participant data kept, and what happens when I delete a study?
Participant data (recordings, results, and participation records) is kept until you delete it; there is no automatic expiry. Deleting a participation removes its recordings and data permanently. Deleting a study removes the study and its invite links but does not automatically delete the participations collected under it, so remove those first if you need the participant data gone. See Privacy and data handling for the full picture.