Time zones in Ethnio 🕚 – study, your account, participants, etc

The time zone you use for your Ethnio account, the time zone of your team members, and the time zone of participants may all be different—let's review how to set this up in a way that fits both remote multi-time zone studies as well as locked in-person time zone studies.

Study time zone

If you're doing remote interviews, this is typically set to automatically detect time zones of participants. But you and your team can all be in different time zones and Ethnio will convert everything automatically.

• For example, scheduling feed times listed for sent emails and other activity will show in your time zone
• If you lock the time zone for a study, times that participants see will follow the locked time zone

Your Ethnio profile & browser time zone

When you create a draft, or send an email from Pool, those times use your time zone. Your browser and your Ethnio profile are set to the same time zone.

Common problems with time zones and how to fix them

Time zones can be frustrating 🤪 We get it. That's the most important problem. If you're seeing time zones that don't match your expectations, or participants are receiving the wrong time zone in scheduling or other communication, please start with this list. We've tried to cover common use cases.

1️⃣ Study time zone is missing or wrong

Head to scheduling > calendar inside your screener or study and double-check the time zone is set correctly just above the calendar. Basically, the concept of a "Study" controls the time zone, and Ethnio user's can have any time zone they like and when they view or edit the study, it will not necessarily change the study time zone.

2️⃣ Locked time zone in scheduling questions isn't working right

If you're doing an in-person study, and you've locked the time zone in your scheduling question (more on that here), it's possible participants may have filled out your screener before that toggle was active. You'll have to re-submit their screener response with the new locked time zone in that case.

3️⃣ Time zone is missing in your profile

In certain cases, it's possible you have a blank time zone in your profile, which can cause the study time zone to be incorrect or missing. Head to account > profile and check your time zone is correct.

4️⃣ A participant has the wrong time zone

If only one or two participants receive the wrong time zone in their scheduling invites, it's possible they may have filled out your screener while traveling, accidentally selected the wrong time zone, or had daylight savings start or end. These are pretty common scenarios, but there's an easy way to identify this. Look for the little warning icon in their response or scheduling time that says time zone mismatch. If that's present, you'll want to contact the participant directly to verify what their correct time zone should be. If they made a mistake, you'll have to re-submit their screener and scheduling response with the correct time zone.

Additional Info

Please note that the account time zone is separate from the study/screener time zone and often differs. When team members create screeners in Ethnio, the screener time zone will default to the creator’s time zone.

Additionally, when a new user joins your team, Ethnio will prompt them to set their time zone during profile setup.