For Clients

When can Uni Panel start supporting client projects?

Uni Panel expects to begin accepting new client projects from January 2027. If you are planning a study for 2027 or beyond, we'd be delighted to hear from you before then so we can discuss your requirements and explore how Uni Panel may be able to help.

How do I find academics for qualitative research projects?

Uni Panel helps organisations recruit academics for surveys, interviews, focus groups and usability studies through our specialist higher education and research participant network. We can identify and invite suitable academics using profile information including discipline, role and location. You tell us who you want to talk to and we'll reach out to them.

How do I survey university staff or researchers?

Uni Panel can distribute invitations to relevant higher education professionals and researchers worldwide for survey projects. We will need to check the quality of these prior to launch, which we will provide a checklist for. If you have a list of your contacts, we have a process for de-duping these with our lists, without any exchange of personal data. Please ask us for details.

How do I find a global sample of researchers?

You're in the right place. Uni Panel includes members across 182 countries and can support international recruitment projects.

Can I use Uni Panel for sales or marketing?

Absolutely not. Uni Panel is a research-only panel.

Can I recruit by academic discipline?

Yes. Many panel members have subject-specialism information attached to their profile.

Can I recruit research managers and professional services staff?

Yes. We can help identify and invite research managers and other specialist higher education audiences.

Can I recruit participants for subsequent projects?

Not without both our consent and theirs. This will be explicit in our terms and conditions. Additional payments will be required for any follow up contact.

Do participants receive invitations directly from clients?

No. Invitations are always distributed through Uni Panel.

Can Uni Panel conduct a research project for us?

Uni Panel mainly focuses on participant recruitment and access, though we may also do occasional projects of our own. If you require more extensive support with research design, fieldwork, moderation, analysis or reporting, we can introduce you to experienced independent research partners.

How does pricing work?

Projects are quoted individually based on recruitment requirements, target audience and project complexity. Note that we will run a limited number of projects each year on an at-cost basis for organisations or individuals without the means to pay our full prices. Please contact us for details.

Will I need to pay the participants?

We firmly believe that those conducting research should pay participants. There are a few reasons for this:

• Academics, scientists and others in the research and higher education community already do a great deal of work for free. It is only fair that they should receive some compensation for what they contribute to research projects.
• A happy respondent will also contribute higher quality information.
• Not paying respondents can mean that only those who are extremely interested in a topic contribute, thus biasing the sample. While paying respondents introduces biases too, our experience is that using a paid sample helps clients get past talking to people they are already engaged with or hear from, giving them more of a sense of what people in general actually think.

How much will I need to pay the participants?

Each project will be different, with incentives linked to the length of time commitment required, the topic and who you want to hear from.

We suggest lower incentives for short interviews that could be conducted by a wide range of people and which are about a high-engagement topic for a client with a strong reputation. Similarly, we would suggest higher incentives for longer interviews with hard-to-reach respondents, around topics that might not be as attractive or for clients with less brand recognition.

What if my organisation is not allowed to pay incentives to participants?

We can discuss this. Quite often we find that incentive payments are actually allowed when we explore this area with a client — after all, you are able to pay other people for work they undertake.

In rare cases, it may really be the case that it is impossible to pay an incentive. If we think our participants will still want to be involved, we will allow projects to go out through the panel without incentives attached. However, this will be very much the exception.

Does that mean that I need to talk to my accounts department about writing lots of cheques or making lots of payments?

No, we can handle the payment aspect. This is part of our costs. You will need to pay for incentive costs as part of your upfront payment before we start work. We'll make this clear in our initial quote.

Can I reward participants using samples or vouchers for my own products?

Our founder, Jane Powell, is a member of the Market Research Society (MRS) and follows the MRS code of conduct. As such we are prohibited from using the products or services of an organisation as an incentive, unless this is required for the execution of the research. We are able to offer other forms of compensation e.g. vouchers, if cash is deemed unacceptable, however, evidence shows that cash incentives are the most effective.