Set Survey Quotas

Survey quotas help academic researchers control target response counts. Use quotas to cap total completes, define a sample cell from question answers, flow variables, or branch arms, close the survey for full arms, cross two or more dimensions into a matrix of mutually-exclusive cells, or reroute later respondents once a quota fills.

Quotas live in the Deploy tab. A quota can count every response, or only responses matching rules you define directly on a question answer, a flow variable, or a branch arm from Flow — combine several rules with Match All or Match Any.

A question-answer rule can use most question types, including Constant Sum, MaxDiff, Card Sort, Text Highlighter, Tree Test, Heatmap zones, Reaction Time, audio, File Upload, and Signature. The value box lists the values that type produces, such as Best: item for MaxDiff or Task 2: Success for a tree test. See Which Answers Can Drive A Rule for the full list.

1. Step 1: Open Deploy. Select the Deploy tab and find the Quotas panel.

   Step 1: Open Deploy and find Quotas

2. Step 2: Add the quota. Choose Add Quota and give it a clear name, such as Treatment A target or Total completes.

   Step 2: Add a quota

3. Step 3: Choose who counts. Keep All Respondents for a simple total-completes cap, or switch to Respondents Matching Rules and add one rule per condition (question answer, flow variable, or branch arm). Combine rules with Match All (AND) or Match Any (OR).

   Step 3: Define match rules

4. Step 4: Set the target and, optionally, a group. Enter the target completes. If this quota is one cell of a larger design (e.g. one age band within an age × gender design), assign it to a Group so it stays mutually exclusive with its siblings — a respondent who matches more than one quota in the same group only counts once, against whichever quota appears first in the list.

   Step 4: Set target and group

5. Step 5: Choose the full behavior. Pick one of four actions once the quota fills: end the survey for matching respondents only, end the survey for everyone (closes the whole survey the moment this quota fills, even for respondents who don't match its rules), send matching respondents to a branch, or send everyone to a branch. Then pick the destination — an end screen or any survey block.

   Step 5: Set quota-full behavior

6. Step 6 (optional): Set a variable when full. A quota's action can also write a value into a flow variable the moment it fires — useful for tagging respondents in exports or piping a message elsewhere in the survey. This is independent of the end/route behavior; both can apply at once.

7. Step 7: Preview and monitor. Test the route with Preview before publishing. Each quota card shows a live progress bar toward its target once responses start coming in.

   Step 7: Preview quota routing

Quotas are evaluated top to bottom. Drag a quota's grip handle to reorder the list — order matters in two ways: when more than one full quota's action would apply to the same respondent, the first one in the list wins; and within a group, only the first quota a respondent matches actually counts them, even if a later quota in the same group would also match.

Use groups whenever cells should be mutually exclusive — for example, an "18–34" and a "35–54" age quota shouldn't both count the same respondent. Assign a Group from each quota card, or generate an entire matrix of grouped cells at once (see below).

For designs that cross two or more dimensions — age × gender, condition × region, and so on — use Generate Matrix instead of building each cell by hand. Pick a source for each dimension (a question, a flow variable, or a branch), list the values to cross for question/variable dimensions (a branch dimension automatically uses every arm), and set one target count and one full-behavior shared by every cell. Generating the matrix creates one quota per combination and puts them all in a new mutually-exclusive group.

A quota's open/full status can also drive branching elsewhere in the survey: in Flow, a condition set's deterministic or stratified assignment can read a quota's status as its source, routing respondents differently depending on whether a given quota is still open. See Branching and Skip Logic.

The quota panel shows live progress toward each target. In Export, every response is tagged with a Completion column — respondents who finished normally show Completed; respondents whose survey ended because a quota's action fired show which quota ended them, so you can separate genuine completes from quota-driven screen-outs during analysis.

Count Completes Only

By default a quota counts every saved response that matches its rules. Turn on Count completes only on a quota to leave out responses that didn't actually complete: respondents a recruitment integration recorded as screened out, over quota, or quality terminated, respondents ended by a quota, and abandoned partial responses. Without it, screen-outs fill the quota and it closes before you have the completes you need. Connecting a recruitment provider in Deploy turns this on for every quota, because panels only pay for completes. Turning it on recomputes the quota's count from your existing responses.

When a recruitment integration is connected, the Completion column also shows Screened Out, Over Quota, or Quality Terminate for respondents who ended on those screens.

Get Told When A Quota Is Nearly Full

Domandata notifies a survey's owner when a quota reaches a share of its target (90% unless you pick another level from 50% to 99%) and again when it fills, in the notification bell and, if you choose, by push or email. The alerts follow the quota's own count, so with Count completes only on, screen-outs don't trigger them. Change the level or channels for every survey in Settings → Notifications, or for one survey in Deploy → My Notifications, where collaborators can also opt in. See Get Notified During Fieldwork.

If Domandata is connected to ChatGPT, ChatGPT can watch the same quota events and act on them, like drafting a note to your panel provider. It can watch one quota or every quota in the survey. These notifications carry the quota's name, target, and current count only, so they work without giving ChatGPT access to responses.

Quotas manage sample targets; they do not replace a sampling plan. Decide whether a quota should reflect starts, completions, or respondents reaching a specific arm based on your protocol and recruitment source. For planning cell sizes before launch, see Sample Allocation Across Condition Arms.

• Create Experimental Conditions
• Branching and Skip Logic
• Publish and Share a Research Survey
• Export Research Survey Responses
• Create Your First Academic Research Survey