You can Pause and Stop an active study at any time by selecting the option from the Action menu.
Pausing a study
This may be useful if you become aware of some problems with your survey after publishing, and need to make some changes on your survey software before resuming data collection.
For example, you may become aware that your participants are having problems accessing your completion code/URL. In this case, you can 'Pause' your study and refer to this guidance to make the necessary changes to your survey.
When your study is paused, you can resume data collection simply by selecting 'Start' (from the Action menu) after you've resolved any issues. Studies become paused automatically if the maximum number of submissions is reached, but then one or more submissions are either rejected or returned by the participants.
Stopping a study
This allows you to close your study early before the maximum number of approved submissions has been reached. Some examples of when you might want to do this are:
- To change the prescreening criteria of your active study.
- When one or more of your study details have been entered incorrectly, and you do not wish to collect more data for this version.
- You are fully satisfied with the data you've collected, and do not wish to obtain the number of submissions you initially requested.
When you stop your study, its status will change to 'Completed' when all submissions have been reviewed. You will then be able to download a summary for your completed study, which will show that the costs have been paid in full. Any leftover funds from the submissions you did not obtain will be restored to your available balance.
If you wish to make any changes to the study and resume data collection, you can 'Duplicate' your completed study and publish a new version after making the necessary changes. Don't forget to add a 'Previous Studies' screener to your duplicated study, so that participants from the old version cannot take part in the new version.