Generated population
The pool of individual lives
A broader artificial population grounded in real-world distributions. It contains people who were not created for the current research question.
§ Definition · artificial panel respondents
What are artificial panel respondents?
An artificial panel respondent is an artificial respondent selected into a defined, reusable research panel. The same synthesized individual can participate across studies or versions while retaining the same identity and prior life history.
- The population exists before the panel
- Panel selection chooses people, it does not create them
- The same respondent can be selected again
Last updated
§ 01 · Direct answer
A panel is a selection from a population, not a batch of roles generated for a study
Antestrata creates individual people as part of a broader synthesized population first. A panel is formed later by searching that population for people who match the research criteria.
Those selected people become artificial panel respondents. Their identities and life histories do not begin with panel membership. The panel only determines who participates in a particular body of research.
Canonical definition
An artificial panel respondent is an artificial respondent selected into a defined, reusable research panel. The same synthesized individual can participate across studies or versions while retaining the same identity and prior life history.
§ 02 · Population vs panel
The world is broad. The panel is selected
Population synthesis and panel recruitment are separate steps. Keeping them separate prevents the research brief from writing the people it later claims to study.
Artificial panel
The selected research group
An artificial panel is a selected group of artificial respondents drawn from a broader synthesized population for a specific research purpose. Panel membership does not by itself make the panel statistically representative of a real population.
Panel respondent
One selected individual
A person from the generated population who has been selected into the panel and can participate across one or more runs.
§ 03 · How a panel is formed
Search first. Recruit second. Ask third
01
Define the audience
Set the geography, age, economics, work context, behaviours, or other research criteria that matter.
02
Find matching people
Search the already generated population for individuals whose lives match those criteria.
03
Select the panel
Choose the respondents who will participate and keep their identities stable for the research design.
04
Run and re-run
Ask questions, compare versions, or return to the same respondents later without recreating who they are.
§ 04 · Reuse
The same respondent can meet the next version
A reusable panel lets a team return to the same synthesized individuals after a page, concept, price, message, or flow has changed. The comparison is no longer between two newly generated roles. It is between two encounters with the same people.
That is useful when the research question is about change. Did the new price framing repair the objection? Did the revised proof change trust? Did a simpler onboarding path remove the hesitation seen in the first version?
The panel can change. The respondent does not need to be recreated.
§ 05 · Representativeness
Grounded distributions do not make every panel representative
Antestrata grounds the broader generated population in real-world distributions. That is a population-construction claim. It is not a promise that every selected panel estimates the prevalence of an opinion in a real population.
Panel composition still depends on who you select, how many people you include, and what question you are trying to answer. Antestrata is built for directional pre-audience research and decision support, not population-representative forecasting.
Population grounding answers: what kind of world were these people synthesized inside? Panel design answers: which of those people are participating in this research?
§ Before the real users.
Build a panel from people who already exist
Start with the audience you need. Antestrata finds matching respondents in the generated population and returns a decision brief before live research.