Participant Statuses

Last updated: February 5, 2026

Understand each Participant Status and Contact Status to manage participants efficiently and effectively, adhere to governance rules, and avoid over-contacting.

Participant Statuses

Participant Status is a study-specific field:

Relates directly to their progress within a given study.
Shown on participant tables in studies, and can be filtered by in a study.
Determines which participant stage / table they'll be found in within a study.

Not Contacted	Participant has been added to a Study but has not yet been contacted via email.
Not Eligible	Governance rules prevent outreach as the Participant should not be contacted.
Study Invited	Participant has been sent an initial outreach email with a link to the survey, or a link to the screener if one is enabled for interview or unmoderated test Studies.
Screener Started	Participant has started but not completed a screener.
Screener Qualified	Participant completed screener and is auto-qualified.
Screener Not Qualified	Participant completed screener and is disqualified.
Screener Completed	Participant has completed the screener with no auto-qualification or disqualification.
Interview Invited	Scheduler email has been sent to the Participant with a link to book time.
Interview Scheduled	Participant has scheduled an interview.
Interview Completed	Participant has completed the interview.
Test Invited	Unmoderated test link has been sent with email.
Test Started	Participant has started but not completed the unmoderated test.
Test Completed	Participant has completed the unmoderated test.
Survey Started	Participant has started but not completed the survey.
Survey Completed	Participant has completed the survey.
Incentive Not Sent	Participant is still awaiting the incentive. Take action by sending an incentive email.
Incentive Sent	Incentive email has been sent to the Participant but not yet redeemed.
Incentive Claimed	Incentive has been claimed by the Participant.
Canceled	Participant marked as canceled.
Opted Out	Participant opted out from being contacted.
Hard Bounced	Any email to the Participant hard bounced and they are uncontactable.
Soft Bounced	Any email to the Participant soft bounced and was not delivered.
Interview Canceled	Interview was scheduled but either the Participant or the host canceled it.
No Showed	Participant scheduled but was marked as did not attend the scheduled session.

Contact Statuses

Unlike Participant Status, Contact Status is workspace-wide field:

Relates to any outreach across any study and workspace governance rules.
Shown on person profiles, in populations and people database.

Free to Contact	Participants can be contacted for research purposes.
Do Not Contact	Participant should not be contacted further.
In Cooldown	Participant was recently contacted or participated in a Study, or put on a manual or automatic cooldown based on Governance Rules, and should not be contacted yet.
Opted Out	Participant has opted out of research or unsubscribed and should not be contacted.
In Blocklist	Participant has been placed in the blocklist manually or by custom Governance Rules and cannot be contacted for research. Participants may be added to the blocklist for various reasons, such as repeated no-shows, dishonesty, or poor communication during research Studies. Blocklist Participants can be manually removed from the blocklist.

Participant Stages within Studies Tables

Study participants are organized into different Stages (tables) based on their Participant Status as they progress. Each stage represents a group of statuses.

Not Started
Invited
Screening
In Progress
Pending Incentive
Done
Cancelled

Understanding 'Invited' vs 'In Progress'

When managing participants in Rally, you may notice some are categorized as 'Invited' while others appear as 'In Progress'. This difference stems from the type of invitation sent.

For example:

Study Invited: Participants invited to complete an initial screener remain in the 'Invited' stage until they take further action.
Interview Invited: Participants directly invited to schedule an interview (bypassing the screener) move immediately into the 'In Progress' stage, reflecting their direct engagement with a study activity.

Updating Participant Statuses Manually

Participant Statuses can be manually updated as needed from directly within a Study.

Navigate to Studies and select a study name to open it.
From the left-side panel, select the relevant participant stage to open a participant table, such as 'Invited' or 'In Progress' for example.
Use the checkboxes to select the relevant participant(s), optionally using the search bar or filters to narrow your search.
Select the Participant Status button from the top of the table and select a new Participant Status from the dropdown.
In the popup, review your changes before selecting Change status to update.

Note: Study progress counts toward the participation limit will not reflect participants whose participant status were manually updated in Rally to reflect external interviews unless you also create a manual booking in Rally to log their session to be counted.

If an external interview was conducted, use + New Booking to log a past session without sending any notifications, which will automatically update their status to Interview Completed and count towards the total interviews completed.
If you are tracking upcoming external interviews by manually changing participant status to Interview Scheduled, this also will not count towards the interviews booked total without an interview created in Rally, but note that logging external sessions this way will still notify participants if the interview time is not in the past.

Update Participants Who Complete Linked Surveys

The flexibility to manually Update Participant Statuses is also useful when using other survey tools linked to Rally Studies when selecting 'Link to a custom survey' during the survey or screener setup step in a Study.

If your survey tool does not allow the use of redirect links, Participants who complete your screener or survey will not be updated to Done in Rally.

Follow these general instructions to update your Rally Study Participants based on survey responses in your alternate survey tool.

Navigate to Studies and select a study name to open it.
Select In Progress from the left-side panel to view participants with the Survey Started or Screener Started participant status.
In your alternate survey tool, review the list of people who have completed the survey and use that data side by side with your Rally study to manually update the Participant Statuses for those people.
Select the checkboxes for the relevant participants who completed the survey.
Select the Participant Status button at the top of the table and select Survey Completed.
In the popup, select Change Status to apply.