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Design a population

By default an experiment runs against a general population. Targeting narrows who answers.

Traits​

Traits are the characteristics a respondent can have. Fetch the catalogue before you target — the ids are what the API expects:

curl "$SUBCONSCIOUS_API/api/v1/traits" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUBCONSCIOUS_TOKEN"

Each trait carries a short and long description, a measurement type, and whether it is ordinal.

Target by trait​

Pass trait filters on the experiment request:

{
  "why_prompt": "What factors drive consumer choice of electric vehicles?",
  "population_traits": {
    "Travel frequency": ["Weekly"]
  }
}

Target by demographics​

US demographic targeting goes in target_population; outside the US, use non_us_target_population. Available axes include age, income, education, racial group, home ownership, household size, and households with children.

Validate before running​

Validation tells you whether a targeted population can actually be built. Over-constrained targeting is the most common cause of a disappointing run: each additional filter shrinks the pool, and a thin pool produces noisy estimates.

curl -X POST "$SUBCONSCIOUS_API/api/v1/populations/validate" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUBCONSCIOUS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "target_population": { } }'

Use /api/v1/populations/validate-non-us for non-US populations.

Population groups and external personas​

You can run against a named population group, or supply your own personas. These two are mutually exclusive — pick one. Supplying personas is the right move when you have first-party audience data; a named group is the right move when you want a familiar segment reproduced consistently across runs.

Practical advice​

  • Target on what plausibly changes the decision. Filters that do not affect the choice cost you precision and buy nothing.
  • Validate first, then run.
  • Keep the population fixed when comparing two designs. Changing the audience and the design at once makes the comparison meaningless.