Screening
How to design screening questions and configure auto-grading to qualify the right participants.
Screening determines which applicants are qualified for your opportunity. You can combine demographic filters (handled before participants even see the opportunity) with screening questions (asked during the application flow).
How Screening Works
- Filters narrow the audience before they see the opportunity. Only experts matching your demographic, geographic, and professional criteria can view and apply.
- Screening questions are asked during the application flow. They can be auto-graded or manually reviewed.
- AI screening interviews (optional) use your research guide to conduct a voice conversation that evaluates fit.
Screening Question Types
| Type | Format | Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| Single select | One answer from a list | "What is your primary role?" |
| Multi-select | Multiple answers from a list | "Which tools do you use daily?" |
| Yes/No | Boolean toggle | "Do you own a smartphone?" |
Designing Good Screening Questions
Write screening questions so the qualifying answer is not obvious. If participants can guess what you want to hear, the screening loses its value.
- Include plausible distractor answers alongside qualifying ones
- Avoid leading phrasing that hints at the correct response
- Keep questions concise and unambiguous
- Test your questions with a colleague before launching
Qualification Logic
Each answer option carries a disposition that determines what selecting it does:
| Disposition | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Must select one of | At least one option tagged this way must be selected. The default qualifying rule |
| Must select | This exact option must be selected. Multi-select only, and every one tagged must be chosen |
| May select | Acceptable; neither qualifies nor disqualifies |
| Reject | Selecting this option disqualifies the participant |
| Flag for review | Diverts an otherwise-qualified applicant to a human decision instead of auto-qualifying |
On a single-select question there is only one answer to give, so Must select and May select have no meaning there. Use Must select one of for the qualifying answers and Reject for the disqualifying ones.
Auto-Grading
Terac evaluates answers against these dispositions as soon as they are submitted:
- If the qualifying conditions are met and no reject answers are selected, the participant passes
- If any reject answer is selected, the participant is screened out immediately
- If a flag for review answer is selected, the applicant is routed to a human instead
- Results are instant with no manual review required
Reviewing Applicants Yourself
Auto-grading and human review are set per opportunity, not by leaving rules blank. An opportunity is either configured to auto-invite qualified applicants, or to route every applicant to a review queue where you accept or decline each one. Use Flag for review when you want most applicants auto-qualified but specific answers escalated. To change the policy on your opportunity, ask your Terac contact.
Quotas
Quotas let you control how many participants you need for specific screening answers. This is useful when you need a balanced sample.
For example, if you need 60 participants total with at least 20 from each of three experience levels:
- Set the total participant cap to 60
- Add a quota for each experience level with a target of 20
Recruitment continues until all quota targets are met and the total cap is reached. Without quotas, recruitment is first-come-first-served.
See the API documentation for programmatic quota configuration.
AI Screening Interviews
For opportunities that need deeper qualification, you can attach a research guide with a screening policy. The AI moderator will:
- Conduct a voice interview following your discussion guide
- Evaluate responses against your screening policy
- Auto-qualify or disqualify based on the policy rules
This is particularly useful when qualification depends on nuanced answers that simple multiple-choice questions cannot capture.
See Research Guides for how to set up discussion guides and screening policies.