Define what you are asking before requesting records
Start with an exploratory question such as how people describe wear or repair in backpack discussions. This is a proposed reading task, not a measured claim about a product category. Use https://api.redditlistening.com/v1/search?q=backpack&subreddit=BuyItForLife&limit=3 as the initial bounded request. Send the domain key from your server with either supported authentication header, and keep it out of your saved analysis materials.
q=backpack asks for that text, subreddit restricts the community and limit=3 caps the page. The request is not a survey of owners and need not produce brand mentions. A person may discuss someone else’s experience or repeat a quotation. Save the response, exact query and your own retrieval time so another analyst can see what material your interpretation used. Do not promise that a later request will return identical records.
If the research uses dates, supply from and to as YYYY-MM-DD in UTC. The to date includes the entire UTC calendar day, including when that date is today; it is not cut off at the time the query is submitted. This rule bounds the date filter, not the availability of later material. Record timezone choices when relating the query to a campaign or product event.
Apply a manual codebook without manufacturing certainty
For each available statement, distinguish the subject from its assessment. You might record whether it concerns carrying comfort, fabric wear, a repair or an unrelated topic. These are labels in your local codebook, not API fields. If you also code positive, negative or mixed language, define what those labels mean and retain an uncertain option. Mentioning a brand is not itself praise, criticism or ownership.
Read enough available context to decide whether the author reports firsthand use, quotes another person, asks a question or uses irony. Flat records may lack text or linked context. When parent_id or link_id is present, local grouping can help, but it cannot guarantee a complete thread. Record unresolved context rather than inferring the missing speaker’s words. A reviewer should be able to trace a code back to the retained statement.
Have another reader apply the same rules to some of the saved material if that suits the project. Compare disagreements and revise definitions before describing a theme. This is a local research practice, not a service-provided accuracy score. Keep the observed wording distinct from the analyst’s explanation and avoid exporting unnecessary contributor identifiers into a presentation.
Report what the retrieved material can and cannot support
BuyItForLife has its own participation patterns. The chosen English term, community, optional dates and score threshold introduce selection effects before coding begins. min_score does not identify trustworthy testimony or sentiment; it is only a numeric filter. Missing archive material and unknown totals add further uncertainty. More pages can increase the material you inspect, but 100-record and 100-page limits do not make the result exhaustive or representative.
Any counts you produce should name their denominator: the retained records under this query and your coding rules. Do not equate records with unique buyers, add overlapping query totals as if they were disjoint, or report a share of the market. Local sorting by a valid time field only orders what you have; _doc retrieval order is not chronological. No live alert or change in present-day brand perception follows from these historical observations.
One successful retrieval, even an empty one, costs one credit. Local rereading and recoding of the saved response requires no API request. State collection limits alongside the findings and distinguish a failed request from no observed match. The strongest defensible result may be a set of examples and unresolved questions for further research, rather than a calculated sentiment score or a claim about all customers.
