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A cohort is the audience a test or focus group runs against. It’s a slice of the grounded population, defined by the data it’s built from and the filters you apply. Every cohort reports a sample size (n) so you always know how many personas stand behind a result.
Cohorts list showing voter audiences such as Suburban Swing Voters and Rural Independents

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Create a cohort

Go to Cohorts → New cohort and work down the builder. A live preview on the right shows the sample size and an example respondent as you refine.
Cohort builder for Suburban Swing Voters with source datasets and a sample respondent preview
1

Name your cohort

Give it a name you’ll recognize later, such as Suburban Swing · Undecided.
2

Choose the source data

Under Source data, toggle which datasets this cohort is built from. Turning a source off removes its signal from the personas. See Datasets.
3

Apply demographic filters

Narrow the sample by age range, gender, state or territory, income, household, and education. Leave a filter as Any to keep it open.
4

Add psychographic tags

Select data-backed tags — attitudes and dispositions such as Cost-of-living anxious or Climate-focused. Tags are grounded in the source data, not guessed.
5

Create the cohort

Click Create cohort. It’s now available to any test or focus group in the workspace.
Keep cohorts focused. A tight, well-defined cohort produces sharper segment cuts than one broad audience — and you can always build several and compare them.

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Sample size

As you filter, Simulant shows the available sample size (n). When you run a test, you choose how many personas to draw from the cohort; the panel is capped at the cohort’s total. Larger samples tighten the confidence of quantitative measures; smaller samples run faster.

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Editing and reusing cohorts

Open any cohort from Cohorts to adjust its sources, filters, or tags and Save changes. Cohorts are reusable across tests and focus groups, which keeps results comparable — running two creatives against the same cohort is a clean like-for-like read.

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Next

Add a creative

Upload the asset you want this cohort to react to.

Run a test

Put your cohort to work.