Common Timezone Gotchas

Ethnio allows participants to manually change their time zones. One common "gotcha 😜" is when a participant selects Central America Time instead of the intended US Central Time, which can cause confusion over their actual session time.

Our platform displays a warning ⚠️ message when participants manually change their time zones, and you'll be able to find this under Scheduling >> Calendar >> clicking on their session:

In-person studies: if participants are getting reminders in the wrong time zone (like PST participants seeing EST), it’s likely because time zone gets locked to the study leads time zone at the time participants complete the screener.

Even if you update the facilitator’s time zone later, or lock the timezone under Studies/Screeners >> Questions, any participants who signed up before that change will still see the original time zone in their reminder emails and texts.

If you encounter similar issues or have any questions regarding participant scheduling or any other aspect of your study, please reach out to help@ethn.io.