Participant Terms

Plain-language summary

• You must be at least 18, hold one account only, and give us information that is true.
• Taking part is always voluntary. You choose which studies to accept and you can return one at any point before it is reviewed.
• When you accept a study you enter a separate agreement with the researcher. We conclude that agreement on the researcher's behalf as their commercial agent, and we pay your reward on their behalf.
• Researchers must review submissions promptly. Anything not decided within 21 days is approved automatically and paid.
• If a submission is rejected you can appeal to us, and a person will look at it.
• Do not use bots, AI assistance, another person, or a second account. These are the fastest ways to lose an account and any balance on it.
• Rewards may be taxable income. Paying that tax is your responsibility.

1. Who we are and what this covers

These Participant Terms are a binding agreement between you and Voxa Research Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales with company number 17430382 and registered office at 141 Belgrave Road, Leicester, United Kingdom, LE4 6AS ("Voxa", "we", "us" or "our"). They govern your use of the Voxa platform as a Participant. Our Website Terms of Use and Participant Privacy Notice also apply to you.

Voxa is a marketplace. Researchers are the organisations, institutions and individuals who use Voxa to list research studies ("Studies"). You are a Participant. What you provide when you take part in a Study is a "Submission", and what a Researcher offers in return is a "Reward".

Most Studies are conducted on a Researcher's own external platform. Some Studies are conducted inside Voxa using our own data-collection tools. Where a Study runs inside Voxa, our Voxa-Hosted Study Terms for Participants also apply and are made clear to you before you accept the Study.

2. The agreements involved

When you accept a Study, an agreement is formed directly between you and that Researcher on the Study Terms. Each Researcher authorises us to conclude that agreement with you on their behalf, as their commercial agent, for the purchase of your services only. We act as agent for the Researcher and never as your agent. We are not a party to the Study Terms.

Because we conclude that agreement as agent, payment of the Study costs to Voxa discharges the Researcher's obligation to pay your Reward. We pay you from the funds the Researcher has already committed. Where you pay or receive money through a card scheme, Voxa acts as merchant of record for that transaction.

If a dispute arises between you and a Researcher, we may try to help resolve it and we operate the appeal process described below, but outside that process we are not obliged to intervene.

• Between you and Voxa: these Participant Terms. We agree to make the platform available to you; you agree to the obligations set out here.
• Between the Researcher and Voxa: our Researcher Terms. We require every Researcher to conduct Studies lawfully, ethically and with any approvals their institution requires.
• Between you and the Researcher: the Study Terms. These are the Study listing together with any consent form, participant information sheet or additional condition the Researcher asks you to accept for that Study.

3. Your status

When you provide a Submission you do so as an independent contractor. Nothing in these terms creates an employment, worker, agency, partnership or joint-venture relationship between you and Voxa, or between you and any Researcher.

That reflects how the platform actually works: you are under no obligation to accept any Study and we are under no obligation to offer you any; you decide which Studies to accept and which to refuse; you choose when and for how long you work; you use your own device, connection and workspace; you are not supervised, appraised or disciplined by us in the way an employer would; and your use of Voxa is entirely non-exclusive, so you are free to use any other research platform at the same time.

You must not hold yourself out as an employee, worker, contractor or representative of Voxa or of any Researcher on the basis of taking part in a Study. This section does not override any status or right that the law gives you on the true facts.

4. Registering and keeping your account

Giving false or misleading information damages research quality, breaches these terms and may in some circumstances amount to fraud. We may verify anything you tell us, including by comparing it with information from our verification providers, and we may restrict access to Studies while we cannot verify it.

Creating an account does not guarantee that Studies will be available to you, that you will be eligible for any particular Study, or that you will earn any particular amount. We may limit availability by country, capacity, legal requirement or demand.

• You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of entering this agreement where you live.
• You may hold one Participant account only, and you must not have previously held an account that we closed.
• Everything you tell us, at registration, in your profile, in screening answers and in Studies, must be true, accurate and not misleading.
• You must keep your password and any multi-factor method secure, and tell us promptly if you think someone else has access.
• You must complete any email, profile or identity check we ask for. Approval is not guaranteed, and evidence that is duplicated, altered or unverifiable may be rejected after review.

5. Account misuse

Your account is personal to you. The following are strictly prohibited, are a serious breach of these terms, and may also be criminal offences:

• Selling, renting, lending or sharing your account or login details, or offering to do so.
• Buying, borrowing or using someone else's account or login details.
• Impersonating another person, or using another person's identity or identity documents, to open or use an account.
• Allowing anyone else to complete a Study on your account. Voxa does not operate a right of substitution: the person who holds the account must be the person who does the work.
• Opening a further account after we have closed, suspended or terminated one, or attempting to evade a restriction by any means.

6. How you must behave

• Follow the instructions in each Study and give attentive, honest and original answers.
• Do not use bots, scripts, answer farms, generative AI, automated translation or any other method of non-original content generation when taking part, unless the Researcher expressly instructs you to and you follow those instructions exactly.
• Do not automate registration, or crawl or scrape data from Voxa.
• Do not use Voxa for advertising, or to solicit business.
• Treat Researchers, other Participants and our staff with respect. We operate a zero-tolerance policy on racism, discrimination, harassment, threats, violence and abuse of any kind, including towards our support staff and automated support tools. We may close an account immediately and without notice where this occurs.
• Do not reverse engineer, decompile or create derivative works from the platform, except so far as the law says we cannot prevent it.
• Report unsafe links, prohibited requests for personal data, deceptive study information, technical failures or inappropriate conduct promptly.

7. Choosing and completing Studies

We use your saved profile and screening answers to show you Studies for which you appear eligible. Being shown a Study is not a promise that it will work on your device, that places will remain, or that a Submission will be accepted. Places are limited and are taken in order.

Before you accept, read the description, the estimated and maximum time, the Reward, device, camera and microphone requirements, whether the Study involves sensitive content, whether it collects personal data, who the Researcher is, and any longitudinal commitment. Taking part is voluntary and you can decline anything.

Accepting a Study reserves your place for the period shown. If the reservation expires, the place may be released to someone else. When you finish, submit the completion code the Study gives you. If no code is available, use the no-code route and explain what happened: a missing code is reviewed by a person rather than being treated automatically as a failure.

You may return a Study while it is in progress or while it is awaiting review. Returning releases the Researcher's commitment and normally earns no Reward, unless the Researcher or Voxa awards a partial payment or bonus. Returning a Study never prevents you from reporting a safety or data-protection concern.

A Researcher may set a maximum completion time, and may screen you out partway through on the basis of in-study questions. Being screened out does not count against your approval rate, and where the product provides a screen-out payment you receive it for the time you spent.

8. Quality and authenticity

We use automated signals to help protect research quality, for example unusually fast completion, duplicate-account indicators, and network signals suggesting a VPN, proxy, Tor or relay. These signals are prompts for review. They do not by themselves suspend, reject or ban an account.

Where a Researcher has set a minimum sensible completion time for a Study, a Submission finished faster than that threshold may be rejected as inauthentic. Where we generate a high-level authenticity indicator about a Submission, we may share it with the Researcher for that Study; Researchers are told not to treat such an indicator on its own as a reason to reject.

If we or a Researcher identify manipulation after a Reward has been approved or paid, we may recover the amount, set it off against future Rewards, or withhold it from an uncashed balance. We will tell you when we do this and why, unless doing so would compromise a fraud investigation.

9. Review, rejection and appeal

The Researcher, not Voxa, decides whether to approve or reject a Submission. We ask Researchers to decide promptly and we expect that within two working days.

Any Submission that has not been rejected within 21 days of submission is approved automatically and the Reward is paid. This period is fixed and Researchers cannot shorten or extend it.

A Researcher may reject a Submission only for a genuine, evidenced reason connected to the published requirements: for example a failed attention check, material incompleteness, duplicate participation or clear misuse. A Researcher must not reject in order to avoid paying, in response to a complaint, on discriminatory grounds, or because of a technical failure outside your control.

If your Submission is rejected you may appeal through Voxa and provide evidence. We may examine the Study, timing, messaging, completion and account records, ask either party for information, and either uphold or overturn the rejection. Where we overturn it we pay the Reward from the funds the Researcher has already committed. Our decision on an appeal is final as far as our own process goes, and does not affect any legal right you have.

10. Rewards, your wallet and withdrawals

The Reward and currency shown when you accept a Study is the amount payable for an approved Submission. Researchers must fund the full Reward budget before a Study can recruit, so an approved Submission is always backed by money already committed.

Approved Rewards and any discretionary bonus are credited to your Voxa wallet. The wallet is a record of what you are owed. It is not a bank account, it pays no interest, it is not covered by any deposit-protection scheme, and it should not be used to hold money longer than you need to.

Withdrawals are subject to any minimum shown in the product, re-authentication, identity and security review, availability of the payout route, and any check the law requires. We do not deduct undisclosed fees from an earned Reward. Currency conversion or receiving-provider charges are shown before you confirm, or are applied by that provider under its own terms.

Withdrawal requests are reviewed and settled by our administrators, who record the payout route used and evidence of settlement. We may delay, suspend or refuse a withdrawal where we cannot confirm your identity, where we reasonably believe the request is unauthorised, where an amount was credited in error, or where we reasonably believe you are in breach of these terms.

If an amount is credited or paid in error (for example a Submission approved that should have been rejected, or a duplicate payment), we may recover it by deducting it from an uncashed balance, setting it off against future Rewards, asking you to return it, or taking legal action. We will notify you first.

11. Tax and platform reporting

Rewards are inclusive of any VAT or any equivalent or similar tax imposed outside the United Kingdom.

Rewards you earn may constitute taxable income for which you are personally liable. It is your responsibility to report and pay any income tax and social security contributions due to the tax authority in the jurisdiction where you are tax resident. Voxa does not deduct tax at source, does not operate PAYE on your Rewards, and nothing we publish is tax advice.

Separately, digital platforms that facilitate the provision of personal services for consideration are required to collect and report information about the people who earn through them. These obligations come from the OECD Model Reporting Rules for Digital Platforms, implemented in the United Kingdom by the Platform Operators (Due Diligence and Reporting Requirements) Regulations 2023 and in the European Union by Council Directive 2021/514 (DAC7), with equivalent rules in a growing number of other countries.

• Where you are resident in a reportable jurisdiction, we must collect and verify: your full name; your primary residence address; your date of birth; your tax identification number and the jurisdiction that issued it (for example a National Insurance number, a social security number or another unique taxpayer reference); and, where you earn through a business, its registration number and any VAT number.
• We must also report the total Rewards paid or credited to you in each reportable period, the number of transactions, the account identifier we paid them to, and any fees or commissions we withheld.
• We report this once a year to the tax authority of the jurisdiction in which we are resident, which then exchanges it with the tax authority of your own jurisdiction. We give you a copy of the information we report about you by the deadline the rules require, so you can check it and use it in your own tax return.

This is a legal obligation on us, not a choice, and you cannot opt out of it while continuing to earn on Voxa. If you do not give us the information we are required to collect, or the information you give cannot be verified, we may be unable to complete your registration, and we may suspend access to your account, including withdrawals, until you provide it. Where the rules require it after repeated requests, we may also close your account and release any balance through the payout route on file.

Tell us promptly if your name, address, tax residence or tax identification number changes, because we are required to keep this information accurate and to re-verify it periodically.

We keep the information we report for the period the applicable rules require, which is currently a minimum of five years from the end of the reportable period. Our Participant Privacy Notice explains how we handle it.

12. Inactive accounts

If no Reward is credited to your account for 12 months, we may close your account and pay any unredeemed balance to the payout route recorded on your account. We will attempt to contact you before we do this.

Where we cannot pay the balance out (for example because no valid payout route is recorded, or a payment attempt fails), we may charge an account closure fee of £10.00 (or the equivalent in your wallet currency) for each attempt to close the account and return the amount due. No closure fee is charged where there is no balance to return.

Claiming your Rewards regularly avoids all of this. If your account is closed for inactivity and you later want to use Voxa again, contact us before creating a new account.

13. Your relationship with Researchers

Each Researcher is responsible for its own Study: the design, the consent materials, the scientific purpose, the study data, ethics and legal compliance. Read the Researcher's information before you take part. We require Researchers to conduct Studies lawfully and ethically, but we do not control how they do so and we are not responsible for their conduct.

We never give Researchers your name, email address or telephone number through the matching service. They see a pseudonymous participant identifier, the screening answers relevant to their Study, basic demographic information and your performance history. If a Study asks you to provide direct identifiers or sensitive information, that request must be disclosed clearly in the listing, and it is entirely your choice whether to provide it. If you do, the Researcher may then be able to connect that information to everything else it holds about your participation.

In limited circumstances (fraud, serious misconduct, or a breach of confidentiality owed to a Researcher) we may need to disclose information identifying you to that Researcher so they can enforce their rights, and you may be liable to us for the costs we incur.

14. Confidentiality and intellectual property

Researchers rely on Studies not being published or discussed. You must not disclose the contents of a Study, its materials, unreleased products or its questions to anyone. Some Studies impose additional confidentiality obligations in the Study Terms. Your confidentiality duty is owed to the Researcher, not to Voxa.

All intellectual property you create in the course of a Study, and in the content of your Submission, vests in the relevant Researcher when you make the Submission. You waive any moral and other proprietary rights you have in each Submission, and where those rights do not vest automatically you agree to assign them and to do what is reasonably needed to perfect them for the Researcher. If a Researcher requires a separate assignment, it must provide that document as part of the Study listing.

Voxa and its licensors own the platform, its branding and its software. We grant you a personal, limited, revocable, non-transferable right to use the service under these terms. You grant Voxa a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, process and display the content you create only as needed to operate, secure and support the service, resolve disputes and comply with the law.

15. Data protection

Our Participant Privacy Notice explains in full what we collect, why, and who we share it with. In summary: we are the controller for the personal data we hold to run your account, match you to Studies, administer participation, pay Rewards, support you and keep the marketplace safe.

We are not the controller of the responses you give inside a Researcher's Study: the Researcher is, and their privacy notice applies to that data. Where a Study runs on Voxa's own tools, we hold the responses as the Researcher's processor and our Voxa-Hosted Study Terms for Participants explain what that means.

Each Researcher that receives personal data about you is a controller in its own right and is responsible for complying with the law. We are not responsible for a Researcher's use or misuse of your data, although we will act on reports and can suspend a Researcher who breaks our rules.

16. Our responsibility to you

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. That includes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, and any of your statutory rights as a consumer. This paragraph takes priority over the rest of this section.

Subject to that, we provide the platform with reasonable care and skill but we do not promise that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, free of malicious code, or that any particular number of Studies will be available to you. Communications networks are outside our control and we may need to take the service down for maintenance.

We are not responsible for the acts or omissions of third parties, including Researchers, other Participants, external study platforms, payment providers, or the device and software you use. We are not providing a backup service for anything you generate through Voxa.

We are not liable for loss that was not reasonably foreseeable to both of us when you opened your account, for loss caused by information you gave us incorrectly, or for business losses: you are using Voxa as a consumer or an individual, not for business purposes.

Subject to the first paragraph of this section, our total liability to you in connection with your use of Voxa, however it arises, will not exceed the greater of £50 and the total rewards credited to your wallet in the six months before the first event giving rise to the liability.

A Researcher's liability to you is limited and excluded on the same basis as ours, unless the Study Terms say otherwise, except that nothing limits a Researcher's liability for breach of applicable law.

17. Your responsibility to us

If we or a Researcher face a third-party claim because you have breached these terms, been negligent, made a misrepresentation, failed to comply with the law or otherwise acted wrongfully, you will indemnify us or that Researcher against the reasonable costs, expenses, losses, damages and liabilities arising from that claim, including reasonable legal fees. You will give reasonable assistance in defending it. We will not settle a claim you are indemnifying without your consent, which you must not unreasonably withhold or delay, and we will take reasonable steps to mitigate the loss.

This section continues to apply after the agreement ends.

18. Holds, suspension and closure

We may pause access, hold a payment for review, restrict features or close an account where it is reasonably necessary to investigate safety, fraud, duplicate accounts, identity concerns, sanctions, unlawful conduct, or a serious or repeated breach of these terms. Where immediate action is not needed to protect users, evidence or the service, we will give you a reason and a reasonable chance to respond.

Significant enforcement decisions involve a person and a recorded reason. We aim to use the least restrictive measure that addresses the concern, and to restore access once it is resolved. We may withhold the detail of a decision where explaining it would compromise our fraud controls or another person's safety, but we will always tell you that a decision has been made and how to challenge it.

You can close your account at any time from Account & privacy. Open reservations, pending withdrawals, appeals and investigations may need to be resolved first. Withdraw your balance before you close your account.

If we end this agreement when we have no reason to believe you are in breach, we will let you claim the balance in your wallet. If we end it when you are, or we reasonably suspect you are, in breach, any Submission under review is treated as returned and unpaid, and we may set your balance off against amounts you owe us or a Researcher.

19. Appealing an account decision

If your account is put on hold, suspended or closed, you can appeal through the Contact page. Tell us what you think we have got wrong and give us anything that supports it. A person who was not responsible for the original decision will review it.

We will give you the reasons for the decision unless disclosing them would compromise fraud detection, an investigation, or another person's safety. If we do not change our decision after considering your appeal, that is the end of our internal process. It does not affect your right to complain to a regulator or to seek a legal remedy.

20. General

• Transfers. You may not transfer your rights under this agreement without our written consent. We may transfer ours with the business on notice to you.
• Matters outside our control. We are not liable for delay or failure caused by events outside our reasonable control, including power, network, hosting or communications failures, epidemics and acts of government.
• Geographic restrictions. We may limit or suspend availability, and prohibit new registrations, in particular countries, for example where we detect sustained fraudulent activity or where the law requires it.
• Entire agreement. These terms and the documents referred to in them are the whole agreement between us about your use of Voxa.
• No waiver. A breach can only be waived in writing, and delay in enforcing our rights does not waive them.
• Severance. If a court finds any provision unenforceable, the rest continues in force.
• Third-party rights. Nobody other than you and us can enforce these terms, except that a Researcher may enforce a provision expressly or impliedly given for its benefit under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
• Notices. We send notices to the email address on your account. Send notices to us through the Contact page, or by recorded delivery to our registered office. Notice of legal proceedings must be served under the applicable civil procedure rules.

21. Changes, governing law and complaints

We may change these terms for legal, regulatory, security, service or operational reasons. We will give you at least 14 days' notice of a material change, normally through a service message or email, and the change will not apply retrospectively in a way that removes a Reward you have already earned or a legal right you have already accrued. A change required by law or needed to address a security risk may take effect immediately. Changes do not affect Studies already listed before they take effect. If you do not accept a change, you can close your account.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, you keep the mandatory protections of your local law and may bring proceedings in the courts available to you under it. Otherwise the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, except that if you are not resident in England or Wales we may bring proceedings in the courts of your country of residence.

If something goes wrong, contact us first through the Contact page. Most things are fixed faster that way. You do not have to contact us before complaining to a regulator. Voxa Research Ltd's details, and our data protection registration, are set out in the Participant Privacy Notice.