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Environments

Research Desk provides two environments for integration work:
  • Staging https://stage-api.researchdesk.com — Use this for all development and testing. It mirrors production behavior without real respondent traffic.
  • Production https://api.researchdesk.com — Your live environment once integration testing is complete.
We strongly recommend completing full end-to-end testing in the staging environment before going live. This includes testing both complete and terminate survey paths in an incognito browser window to avoid triggering Research Defender’s security flags during QA.

Staging Test Surveys

To ensure successful end-to-end testing, we recommend using the following surveys in the staging environment during integration:
Once you’re ready to conduct a live fielding test, contact Rep Data’s Supply team at supply@repdata.com.
For the JSON response envelope and HTTP behavior, see Response Structure.

Respondent Status Codes (isc)

When a respondent is redirected from Research Desk back to your platform, an isc (internal status code) is appended to the redirect link. These isc codes are supplier-facing and identify the respondent’s disposition (complete, terminate, over-quota, security, etc.). See Respondent Status Codes for the full inbound_code, isc, and rdThreat reference.
Research Desk automatically appends the following parameters to your redirect links. Use them to reconcile and route respondents. In addition, Research Desk appends a hashed key (hk) for secure redirects and SCPI (the respondent’s CPI on Stream entry). See Secure Redirects: Link Hashing for details on the hk value.