What does that screener question help you decide?
Back
Before adding another question to a recruitment screener, ask what you will do with the answer.
Will it determine eligibility? Allocate a quota? Establish availability? Identify something to explore during validation?
If nobody can explain how the answer will be used, the question deserves a second look.
Give every question a clear job
- A screener needs to establish who can be considered for the study and capture the information required to progress them appropriately.
- Some questions exclude applicants. Others support sample balance, practical arrangements or an agreed research need.
- Those purposes are legitimate. The problem comes when information is collected simply because it might be interesting, without a clear plan for using it.
Look for repetition across the whole questionnaire
- Questions can appear reasonable individually while covering the same ground repeatedly.
- Platform ownership, recent play, frequency and favourite titles might each be relevant. But when several sections ask for substantially the same information in different ways, applicants carry the burden of that repetition.
- Deliberate consistency checks can have a purpose. They should be distinguished from duplication that has accumulated across drafts or contributions from different people.
Make masking proportionate
- There may be a sound reason to avoid making the target game obvious.
- However, placing one relevant title among dozens—or more than a hundred—creates a substantial reading task. Before doing so, consider what the masking needs to achieve and whether the list is proportionate.
- Removing necessary checks is not the objective. Giving each question and answer list a defensible purpose is.
Leave room for validation to do its job
- At Gromotion, screening identifies applicants who can be considered. We then explore shortlisted players’ relevant experience through human validation.
- The stages should work together. A long questionnaire cannot resolve every uncertainty, while validation should have a clear purpose beyond making applicants repeat information already supplied.
- Agree what needs establishing at each stage and where follow-up is more useful than another written question.
Review the screener as an applicant
- Read the questionnaire from beginning to end, preferably on a phone.
- Check the routing, instructions, repeated topics and length of answer lists. Ask whether someone can understand what is being requested without interpreting research terminology.
- A useful final exercise is to write the purpose beside every question. Keep what supports a decision. Challenge what nobody can account for.
Developing a gaming screener? Get in touch to discuss the recruitment requirements before the questionnaire is finalised.