Now in beta Free for academic researchers — request access and we'll set you up.

Built for experiments.

A survey platform built around experimental research — factorial designs, condition-aware pages and questions, and built-in data-quality checks. Also works well for plain surveys.

Free for academic researchers · In beta — accepting access requests

ThisStudy's page builder, showing a vertical list of pages on the left, a question editor with a Likert scale and short-answer question in the middle, and page-level settings on the right.
The page builder — pages on the left, the editor in the middle, page-level settings on the right.

Designing for conditions

Conditions are first-class. Use a factorial design when your manipulation has a clean structure, or just list out the conditions you need. Either way, condition assignment is handled with block randomization and per-cell quotas.

Factorial designs without the spreadsheet

List your independent variables and their levels; ThisStudy generates every cell of the factorial automatically. Set per-cell quotas if you need balance — participants are assigned with concurrency-safe block randomization, so no cell over-fills.

Each participant carries a condition signature, which lets you rebuild conditions mid-study without losing the data you've already collected.

Conditions tab in factorial mode, showing a 2×2 grid of Offer × Partner conditions with per-cell quota progress bars.

Or just a flat list of conditions

Not every design is factorial. When you need a one-off set of conditions — a control plus three primes, a between-subjects vignette set, an unbalanced design — list them out directly. Same assignment, same quotas, same per-condition targeting downstream.

You can also combine the two: factorial mains plus extra conditions that sit alongside.

Conditions card in simple-list mode: a Simple/Factorial toggle, four named conditions with quota progress bars, and an Add-condition control.

Show a page — or a question — only to specific conditions

Every page and every question has a "show for" setting. Tap the conditions that should see it; leave the rest off. No scripting, no expression language, no separate logic tab.

The same condition picker is used everywhere conditions are referenced, so the control doesn't change shape as you move around the study.

Page settings panel showing a 'Show for' picker with four condition toggles, two of which are active.

Rehearse the study before anyone takes it

Preview runs are kept separate from real data, and preview links work without an account — so you and your collaborators can walk through the study as many times as it takes.

Flip through every condition

The preview inspector has a condition cycler — step to any cell of your design and walk the study exactly as a participant assigned to it would see it. No faked assignments, no extra accounts.

The inspector also shows what's hidden on each page and why, so you can check your show-for rules as you go.

A survey page in researcher preview with the inspector panel open, showing a condition cycler set to condition 2 of 4 and the page content that is hidden for other conditions.

Let collaborators and pilot testers leave notes

Send a collaborator link for the full inspector view, or a pilot link for a clean participant view. Either way, testers can leave notes tagged to the page they're on — no account needed.

Every note lands in one review list on the study, so feedback doesn't scatter across email threads.

The floating note composer open over a survey page, with a short page-tagged note drafted for the researcher.

Reusable scales and consent forms

Validated scales can be dropped into any study from a built-in catalog. Consent forms, end pages, and other reusable content can be saved as personal templates and used across studies. The catalog grows over time.

Drop in a validated scale, ready to use

Pick from the catalog and a scale arrives pre-built: the items, the response options, the question naming, and the codebook labels are all in place.

Need a scale we don't have? Save it once as a personal template — it's available to every study in your account from then on.

Participant view of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: the section title, instruction line, and first statements, each answered on a four-point Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree scale.
A sample of what's already in the catalog

Selected scales.

…and more, with new scales added on request.

Per-condition analytics and study controls

A dashboard for the lifecycle of the study — recruitment, condition balance, completion, data quality — broken out per condition, with a funnel view of where participants drop out.

See what's happening, condition by condition

Total enrollment, completion rate, mean duration, and quality flags are summarized for each condition. Drill in to see individual participants, response histories, and per-page timing — or filter the whole view down to one cell of your factorial.

The same page also surfaces the study-wide settings — recruitment, redirects, quotas, condition rebuild, sharing — so there's one place to manage the study while it's running.

Per-condition analytics cards for four conditions, each showing completion counts, completion rate, and median duration.

Watch the participant journey

A dropout funnel shows where people go: arrived, screened out, eligible, in progress, completed. Below it, the participant log lists every session as it happens.

Drill into any participant for their full response history and per-page timing.

Dropout funnel — 100 arrived, 4 screened out, 96 eligible, 9 in progress, 87 completed — with the first rows of the participant log beneath it.
Quality.

Built-in checks for bad data.

Each response is checked against a handful of quality signals. Honeypot fields, no-JS verification, and duplicate-text checks run on submit. Speeder verdicts, click-through patterns, and IP-cluster signals are computed at read time.

Nothing is auto-deleted — flags surface in the dashboard so you decide what to do with them.

And the rest.

Everything else you'd expect.

The features that probably aren't why you'd switch, but matter once you have.

Conditional logic
Show-if visibility rules with AND/OR groups across pages.
Mid-survey redirects
Route participants away mid-study based on responses.
Sub-pages & page timers
Split a page into timed sub-pages with optional auto-advance.
Save & finish later
Optional resume tokens, optional 4-digit PIN.
URL parameter capture
Named query-string capture; required-param gating.
Recruitment integrations
Sona, Prolific, CloudConnect, direct, with per-platform redirects.
Sharing & folders
Edit / view-only sharing, folders, audit log.
Exports
CSV, JSON, codebook, factorial spec exports.

Why it's free

ThisStudy is run by academic researchers. There's no subscription, no per-response fee, and no plan to add one. We're in beta while we stabilize things. If you want to try it on a real study, ask.

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