How We Ensure Real, High-Quality Participants in AI-Moderated Interviews

We get it. When you hear about AI-moderated interviews, your first reaction might be, “How do we know the participants are real people and not just… another AI on the other end” It’s a valid question! After all, without a human to monitor and audit the conversation, it’s natural to have some doubts.

At Strella, we work closely with our panel providers to ensure participant authenticity, fraud prevention, and high-quality insights. Here’s how it all works:

How We Recruit Real, Live Humans (Promise!)

Our recruitment partner, Respondent, takes participant sourcing seriously. With a panel of over 3 million participants across 150 countries, they follow a rigorous four-step process to ensure authenticity:

1. Matching: Your project’s targeting criteria (like location, demographics, job title, or expertise) are matched with participants who fit the bill.
2. Invitation: Participants complete a your custom screener questionnaire, and you have the option to review their responses and profiles (including social media links) before they join the study. Want to manually vet them? Go ahead! Prefer automation? That works too!
3. Referral: For those hard-to-find participants, Respondent taps into their referral network—because everyone knows someone who knows someone.
4. Boost: Got an ultra-specific, niche project? A dedicated team works overtime to bring in the perfect participants, no matter how tricky the ask.

Quality Participants, No Compromises.

Here’s what happens behind the scenes to ensure your participants are who they say they are.

• High Show Rates: Participants actually show up (95%+ of the time, to be exact), because AI-moderated interviews make it easy and convenient to join. Due to the asynchronous nature, participants are welcome to take the interview at anytime, from anywhere (both desktop and mobile), and in any language.
• Verification Checks: Participants undergo email, phone, and IP address verification. For B2B projects, Respondent will even check their LinkedIn profiles and work emails.
• Consistency Monitoring: Screener responses are analyzed for red flags, and participants are capped on how often they are able to make updates to their profile, ensuring they aren’t able to game their way into your project.
• Researcher Feedback: As your AI-moderated interviews get completed within Strella, you are able to review the sessions before paying participants. See something? Say something. Only pay for successful sessions, and any fraudulent participants are removed from your project and banned from the panel.
• See Who is Behind the Screen: Unlike a survey, with AI-moderated interviews participants can’t hide behind the screen. As the researcher, you control whether your participants share their audio only, video, or even screen recording.

We’ve Got you Covered - Whether You Use the Panel or Bring Your Own Participants

Yes, we understand the hesitation. The idea of AI running the show without a human might feel like a leap of faith. But Respondent’s thorough recruitment process and robust fraud prevention combined with Strella’s ability for you to customize your screeners, review your participants, and audit all responses - we can assure you that you are in good hands.

Want to bring your own customers or participants to the study? We support that as well! You can still use the Strella platform to screen, schedule and pay your participants. Simply send out your interview link, and qualified participants are invited into the AI-moderated interview.

Watch our recent webinar to learn more about how MeUndies used Respondent’s panel + Strella’s AI-moderated interviews to accelerate research 9x - or schedule a demo to get started!

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