The MX8 Labs Research Platform is designed to streamline survey management, especially for teams working on multiple research initiatives. This guide explains how surveys, projects, and accounts are structured on the platform, along with a breakdown of user permissions.
Finding Anything Quickly: Universal Search
However you organize your work, the fastest way back to it is the search bar in the top app bar, available from every screen. Type into the field labeled "Search projects, surveys, reports, insights" and matching results appear as you type, each marked with an icon showing whether it is a project, survey, report, or insight. Select a result and the platform takes you straight to it — no need to click down through the project tree. Because the search spans all four object types by name, it works equally well for reopening a survey you edited yesterday or pulling up a report a teammate mentioned.
Surveys: Flexible Setup, Multilingual Support, and In-Survey Reporting
Each survey on MX8 Labs is created from a single set of survey code and users can:
- Translate the survey into multiple languages to reach diverse audiences without duplicating the survey code.
- Deploy to multiple audience segments: The same survey can be fielded across various demographic or test groups, keeping insights consistent.
- Generate reports and insights from individual surveys: Each survey includes built-in reporting, providing an efficient way to analyze and draw insights from specific audiences or survey waves.
Survey-level insights become available when a survey is complete and reporting data has refreshed. For more on insight eligibility and how to ask better insight questions, see Insights in MX8 Labs.
Projects: Grouping Related Surveys for Streamlined Analysis
Each survey belongs to a project. Projects act as containers to organize surveys that belong to the same research initiative. You should group related surveys within a project, such as multiple waves of a tracking study or different segments of a multi-part survey series.
Organizing surveys into projects offers these benefits:
- Cross-survey Reporting: Users can create reports that aggregate data from all surveys within a project, making it easy to track trends or compare results across related surveys.
- Shared Coding and Labels: Surveys within the same project share the same open-end coding scheme and default reporting labels, ensuring consistent data coding and labeling.
Project insights only use surveys in the project that have been enabled for project insights. This keeps cross-survey insight generation scoped to the surveys you intend to include.
Project Settings and Reporting Defaults
Each project carries settings that apply across its surveys and reports. On the project screen, click Edit on the project details to open the settings editor. Alongside the project name, the owning account, and whether synthetic respondents are allowed, four settings shape reporting behavior:
- Include Respondent Counts in Excel Exports — adds respondent count tables to Excel exports.
- Significance Testing — the default statistical test for new surveys: Residual t-test, Column t-test, or Row t-test.
- Confidence Level — the default confidence level for significance testing: 0.90, 0.95, or 0.99.
- Default Minimum Respondents — the minimum base size required for reporting. New reports default to this value, and cells with fewer respondents are grayed out; see Reporting with MX8 Labs.
Setting these once at the project level keeps every survey and wave in the project consistent, rather than configuring each report by hand.
Accounts: Structuring Access and Permissions Across Research Teams
Each project and the surveys within it are managed under an account. Accounts control access and permissions, helping teams work together effectively. Here's an overview of account access:
- Broad Access by Default: With the built-in roles, every user linked to an account can access all surveys and projects, so team members can collaborate seamlessly. Administrators can narrow this with custom roles whose constraints scope access to specific projects, surveys, or field values.
- Account-wide Permissions: Some users are designated as account administrators. These administrators have additional permissions to add or remove users from the account and to set surveys live.
- Custom Roles: In addition to the built-in system roles, administrators can create custom roles with fine-grained control over which resources and actions each role can access, including optional constraints that narrow permissions to specific fields or values.
Because permissions are account-specific, a user can be an administrator in one account while being a standard user in another. This flexibility allows users to contribute across multiple research initiatives at different levels without needing separate logins.
For a detailed explanation of the permissions model, see Understanding Roles and Permissions. For step-by-step instructions on creating and managing roles, see Managing Roles and Permissions. A complete list of all resources, actions, and constraints is available in the Permissions Reference.