What are respondent exclusions

If you want to stop a respondent from taking your survey, you want to use an exclusion rule to filter them out before they enter. The Cint Exchange uses these rules to protect sample quality, ensuring the respondents who shouldn't be taking your survey are filtered out before entering.

The need for respondent exclusions comes from a buyer's need for independence between sample, where each survey's list of completed respondents is unique. Without exclusions:

• The same respondent can complete a brand tracker in January and again in February, carrying memory and familiarity into the second survey.
• They can complete two surveys in the same project that were designed for independent demographic groups.
• They can appear in a follow-up study they were never meant to see.

Respondent exclusions are used to draw these boundaries around your surveys.

Three exclusion rules

There are three main ways to implement respondent exclusions on a target group, and the way each rule affects your survey differs:

Exclusion rule	Scope	Time bound?	Statuses used for exclusion	Best for
Exclude within this project	Project	No	complete	Unique sample across all target groups in the same project
Respondent activity	Account	Yes (90 days)	in_client_survey - live target groups complete - Paused or completed target groups	Cohort independence across surveys
Individual ID	Exchange	No	All statuses	Permanent blocks on specific respondents

Exclude individual IDs:

• You supply a list of specific respondent IDs
• Individual ID exclusion is not time-bound: once an ID is on the list, it stays there until you remove it. It doesn't factor in participation history — the respondent is blocked regardless of their participation history.
• This is the right tool when you have a defined list of people who should never enter a particular target group, for any reason. This might be a known bad actor, a respondent whose data quality you've already flagged, or someone whose prior exposure would compromise your results.

Exclude within this project:

• You can enable or disable this rule at the target group level
• The Exchange automatically prevents any respondent who completed another target group in the same project from entering this one.
• This is the right tool when your project contains target groups that represent distinct, non-overlapping populations — for example, different demographic cells that should remain independent. The system handles the deduplication; you don't need to maintain a list.

Exclude by respondent activity:

• You configure a target group to exclude respondents who completed specific other projects or target groups within the last 90 days.
• This is the right tool for managing cohort independence across related surveys. For example, brand trackers where each wave needs fresh respondents, sequential research where participants in Phase A shouldn't appear in Phase B, or any design where repeat exposure within a rolling window would compromise your data.

How they interact

All three exclusion rules — Exclude within this project, respondent activity, and individual ID — can be active on a target group at the same time. When a respondent attempts to enter a survey (regardless which rules are active), the Exchange evaluates them in this order:

Step	Check	If yes	If no
1	Is the respondent's ID on the blocklist?	Block respondent and exit rule evaluation	Continue to step 2
2	Is the respondent currently active in a mutually excluded target group?	Block respondent and exit rule evaluation	Continue to step 3
3	Did they complete an excluded project or target group in the last 90 days?	Block respondent and exit rule evaluation	Allow entry

Where to go next

• For the full details of evaluation order and how each check works, see exclusion rule hierarchy.
• To configure individual ID respondent exclusions, see exclude respondents from a target group
• To configure the Exclude within this project setting, see Exclude within this project
• To configure respondent activity exclusions, see setting up respondent activity exclusions
• To understand how respondent activity exclusions work in depth, see how respondent activity exclusions work