Managing participants

Participants are the respondents who take your questionnaires. QUBE Survey separates participant records and audience groups from survey scripts and runs, giving you control over sample management, imports, custom respondent attributes, and data privacy.

Reusable audiences and Groups

An Account owns participant records and reusable Groups. A single participant record can belong to multiple Groups, and a Group can be assigned to multiple survey Runs.

  • Participant: A person record with an optional stable identifier, name, contact details, and custom sample attributes.
  • Group: A defined audience cohort used for personal invitations or signed-in Portal assignments.
  • Open surveys: Do not require a predefined Group; any respondent accessing the open link creates a new attempt.

Prepare Participants and a Group

  1. Open Participants from the product bar and select the owning Account. Use People, access and billing if Account permissions or controls are missing.
  2. Choose Create group, enter its name and optional description, then open it.
  3. Choose Import sample to upload your respondent cohort.

Import sample records

  1. Select a CSV, TSV, or XLSX file containing your sample data.
  2. Choose the unique identifier column for each participant.
  3. If an account sample schema is configured, map the import columns to schema attributes (such as region, demographic tier, or quota tags).
  4. Review the import preview: check accepted rows, duplicate entries, and invalid values before confirming. A preview does not save participant records.
  5. Confirm the import to populate the Group.
  6. Use Participant data to review or correct a member’s identifier, name, and supported sample attributes.

Data privacy and participant erasure

Participant stewardship is built directly into QUBE Survey:

  • Participant erasure: Erasing a participant anonymizes and removes personal identity and contact data across their account record and assignment history under QUBE Survey’s privacy policies.
  • Answer retention: Erasing a participant record does not automatically rewrite questions that may have collected identifying details in the interview text itself.
  • Removing vs. erasing: Removing a member from a Group keeps the participant record intact in the Account; erasure removes the identity data permanently.

Once your Group is prepared, navigate to Managing fieldwork to create a Run and distribute the questionnaire.