Building Quotas

Building quotas is essential for maintaining the correct audience balance in your study. In the Glass platform, there are three ways to set up quotas: Question-Level Quotas, Audience Quotas, and Variable Quotas.

Question-Level Quotas let you set quotas at the question level.

Audience Quotas allow you to set general quotas based on the standardized demographics automatically included in your survey template. These quotas are ideal for balancing your sample across broad characteristics such as age, gender, region, or income level.

Variable Quotas can be used to create more complex demographic groupings or behavioral segments. This flexibility is useful when you need to control the composition of your sample based on specific responses or combinations of variables collected during the survey.

Warning: The more quotas you add, the more potential respondents will be eliminated from your survey, impacting incidence and length of field.  Add and design quotas thoughtfully.

To set up a question-level quota, navigate to the question where you’d like to apply the quota. Scroll down to the Question Features section and click on Quotas.

First, choose the option within the question that you’d like to set a quota for. Once you’ve selected the option, you can specify how you’d like the quota to behave using the following settings:

• At Most — Sets a maximum number of respondents allowed to select that option. Once this limit is reached, no additional respondents who choose this answer will be included. Enter the desired number of completes in the box provided.

• At Least — Ensures that you collect at least the specified number of responses for that option. Other options may pause temporarily to allow the survey to meet the At Least requirement. Enter the desired number of completes in the box provided.

• All — Requires respondents to select this option to remain in the survey. Anyone who does not choose it will be discontinued.

• None — Excludes respondents who select this option from continuing in the survey.
  

If needed, you can add additional quotas for the other options within the same question by clicking the + Add Quota button. Once you have created all the quotas needed for that question, click Apply to apply your quota. Then click Save Question to save the quota within the question. 

To create an audience quota, navigate to the Audience Profile tab within the Audience section of the Build Survey area.

Scroll down to the Who Do You Want to Talk To? section and select the Custom Audience radio button. 

Enter a descriptive title for your audience to help you remember exactly who you’re targeting.

In Audience Quotas,, you’ll see a dropdown menu that allows you to set quotas based on the demographic questions asked at the beginning of your survey. These questions are built to communicate specific sample specifications and should not be changed if you want to use the question as an audience quota. 

Select the demographic variable you’d like to target—such as gender, age, or region—and assign percentage targets for each category within that demographic.

For example:
If you want your sample to include 50% female respondents, set 50% under Female. Then click + Add Another Quota and assign 50% to Male or Non-Binary respondents to balance the audience. 

You may add as many additional audience quotas as needed. Click + Add Another Quota to add an additional quota. Click Save Audience once you have finished adding all of the needed audience quotas. 

• Ensure that the total of all quota percentages adds up to 100%.

• Uncheck any Inbound Census boxes for audiences where you are manually setting quotas. This ensures that your custom quotas—not automatic balancing—determine the final audience composition.

• Keep quotas as simple as possible to maintain efficiency and avoid over-restricting your audience.

Variable Quotas allow you to set more complex quotas that go beyond standard demographic or question-level balancing. These quotas can be created within the Questions section under the Build Survey tab.

Variable quotas are particularly useful when you want to control the number of respondents who qualify based on specific question responses or combinations of demographic factors. For example, you might set a quota for respondents who both meet a certain age range and have purchased a particular product in the past six months.

To build a variable quota, you will first need to create a segment. This page [LINK TO SURVEY VARIABLES] will show you how to create the segments needed. 

Once you have created the variable, 

First, choose the segment within the question that you’d like to set a quota for. Once you’ve selected the segment, you can specify how you’d like the quota to behave using the following settings:

• At Most — Sets a maximum number of respondents allowed to select that segment. Once this limit is reached, no additional respondents who choose this answer will be included.

• At Least — Ensures that you collect at least the specified number of responses for that segment. Other segments may pause temporarily to allow the survey to meet the At Least requirement.

• All — Requires respondents to select this segment to remain in the survey. Anyone who does not choose it will be discontinued.

• None — Excludes respondents in this segment from continuing in the survey.
  

You can add additional quotas for other segments by clicking the plus (+) button. Once you have created all the quotas needed for that question, click Save Variable to apply your settings.

Pro Tip: Where a range of sample fallouts will do, use minimums (“at least”) to create soft quotas. This will put controls in-place without overly restricting sample fallout. For example, instead of creating a quota of exactly 50% brand users and 50% non-brand users, I might set of quota of at least 30% brand users and at least 30% non-brand users, which would allow each group to fallout ranging from 30-70%.