🤔 Ask Anything Thread (Newbie Friendly)

[Yaheli_Cohen]

Hey, thanks.
but the demographic data that you collect on the participants will be shown in Qualtrics as well (I set up the URL parameters and everything you asked for)? where can I see it in Qualtrics? because right now if I use the anonymous link from Qualtrics (not via prolific) I cannot see the participant meta data/demographic data. So I wonder where will I see the data about the participant and if I will be able to connect between the participants answers and the meta data about her?

thanks a lot!
Yaheli

[hperson]

Replying to my own question in case it’s a helpful reference for anyone else. For 304 participants (U.S., 18+, English-speaking) it took about 3 hours to get all the participants I needed. For the follow up, people were more sluggish and I had about 75% retention within 4 days. I can’t say for sure whether it made a difference, but it seemed there was better retention for 1-2 days (~80%) than 3-4 days (~70%) later.

[timtak]

Hi Yaheli

Jumping in.

I don’t know how to get the data from Qualtrics (which Paul is using but I am not) but it is recommended to include a question asking for, or using Qualtrics automatically pass to the Qualtrics database in the URL, the Prolific ID of each participant.

The Prolific ID should allow you to connect Prolific (demographic and screener) and Qualtrics (your questionnaire) data.

Tim

[David_Martinez]

in prolific, in your study, there is a botton—“more”—on the right side. Click it and then “download demographic data”. That should give you info from the filters you used on prolific. For example, if you filtered by age, it will tell you the participants’ ages.

[timtak]

David, Yaheli

I am sorry, I misunderstood. I thought Yaheli was asking about how to get demographic data from Qualtrics.

As David says you can download the demographic data from Study submission page More (top right ) > Download Demographic Data

And we get the list given below by default (irrespective of the screeners you use) plus the participants answers to any other screeners you use.

Please see

Exporting Prolific demographic data

• Session id
• Participant id
• Submission status
• Started date-time (in GMT)
• Completed date-time (in GMT)
• Time taken
• Age
• Sex
• First language
• Current country of residence
• Nationality
• Country of birth
• Student status
• Employment status
• Number of approvals
• Number of rejections
• Approval rate (‘Prolific score’)
• Reviewed at date-time (in GMT)
• Completion code (‘entered code’)

Tim

[Joachim_Layes]

Hello everyone,

I’ve duplicated a study and made it ready to publish for respondents from new target countries. My account is sufficiently funded, but I cannot publish. When hovering over the ‘Publish’ button, the mouse cursor shows the do-not-entry symbol. Is there something I’m missing?

Thank you,
Joachim

[Lorraine_Whitmarsh]

Hi all - is it possible to transfer funds from ‘Projects’ to ‘Workspaces’? I urgently need to launch a study, but my money is locked up in the Projects part of Prolific, and the study I created is on Workspaces. How can I move the money over? Thanks!

[Ben_G]

Hi,

I recently completed my first survey using Prolific. I was under the assumption that I would be able to download all of the non-identifying data that Prolific holds on the respondents after the project completed. However, I see that the provided download only includes my screeners and a few basic details. An important element for me was household income band - which I didn’t include a question on as I assumed it would be provided.

I appreciate this was a bit of a stupid assumption to make on my part - Is there any way I can now access this?

Thanks

[paul]

hi @Ben_G , welcome to the forum!
Unfortunately, not really. You can submit a help request using the “new support request” at the top of the screen, but participants are not required to provide the information. Only by selecting all the options in a pre-screening question would the information be guaranteed. Sorry for the bad news

[timtak]

Dear Ben

I made the same assumption as you in the past.

In addition to asking support, as Paul suggests, you could ask the participants back for a follow up survey using a custom whitelist with their IDs and selecting all the options as the only other screener.
You would only need to ask them their Profilic ID, since the presence of the screener would allow you access to that data. But also bear in mind that those who haven’t answered the question would be screened out.

What percentage of participants would come back, for a very short and presumably low paying survey, however, I am unsure. I guess it will depend on income so perhaps fewer of the high income participants may return.

I’d try and explain the meaning or social significance of the experiment in a message too.

Tim

[Ben_G]

Thanks

The issue is that I currently have zero budget to run anything else. I am waiting for some new funding that would allow to expand the survey quite a bit - but that is far for certain to be granted.

I do think this is something that Prolific is very unclear on and would be extremely helpful if they could have indicated this restriction when creating the survey. I appreciate that it’s my responsibility to ensure that I’m getting the data I need and should have researched this better myself. But it seems a really odd limitation to not just give you access to the data when you are paying so much for the service.

[timtak]

Dear Ben

Yes. I will to put in a ‘feature request’ for increase transparency regarding the lack of availability of screener (About You) data.

You could try simply asking your participants to click on a link (which if you are using Qualtrics, or other survey software that allows passing of information in the URL, will record their Prolific ID) to an empty study that takes no time (other than the time to click on the link) with a screener with all the income bands checked. Still, the minimum payment of one minute will apply. Perhaps you could ask support to be allowed to set a zero minute (just click the link) survey.

In my personal opinion, the Prolific service is quite inexpensive, compared to more traditional survey companies at least. But I am probably biased. They occasionally give me free survey credits occasionally for attempting to help out here.

Tim

[Ben_G]

Thanks Tim,

Yeah, this is just more frustration with myself for not realising the system worked this way. I’m still really unsure though why there isn’t an option to just select whatever data you want - Maybe Prolific considers this to be valuable and not something they want to ‘give away’ without you jumping through hoops.

I think I will create a new survey and target towards them. I’m not confident enough with how the URL thing works to do that - i’ll just ask them to enter their ID.

Thanks

[timtak]

Dear Lorraine
Welcome to the forum
I am sorry I don’t know the answer to this. I am now flagging @Jon, the community leader and Prolific employee. He may be able to help you.
I am sorry about the time it has taken me to respond with this almost complete absence of advice m(._.)m
Tim

[KarinaC]

Hi, I recently created my first study but I’m having issues with getting the billing for it sorted. I wanted to download a quote for my study but I’m running into a 500 server error when I click “Download quote”. I logged a support ticket a couple of days ago but haven’t heard anything back. Any ideas for how I could get this working?
Thanks!

[timtak]

Ben

One other thing. If I were a participant (and I am), I might feel rather suspicious of and disinclined to participate in a survey that only asks for my Prolific ID and retrieves data about me without asking for it.

You might get a better turnout if therefore, you ask the participants their income in the follow up survey, even though you don’t necessarily need to.

Tim

[timtak]

Dear Karina

Welcome to the forum

I am sorry to inform you however that Prolific seems to be facing some sort of billing system malfunction at the moment with more than four researchers reporting similar problems on this thread that Veronica recently created.

Unable to publish new study

Hello Prolific Team (@Jon), In the last hours, two users have reported a similar bug: they seem to have sufficient funds to publish new studies, yet they cannot do it. For example, @Alessandro_Aru says I click on “I have read and agree to the above” and then on “Publish,” but nothing happens. It just freezes until I close the window. Also @Samantha_Jamson needs an answer for this issue. I created this thread to highlight a recent bug that seems familiar to more than one user. I hope the i…

Please contact support and or post to the above thread to be informed of when the malfunction is righted.

Tim

[Beatrice_Vincenzi]

Hi, I have tried to approve and pay a participant in “timed-out” status, but it seems I cannot do that. The submission goes to “processing” status, and after a while if I refresh the page, the submission comes back to “timed-out” status. Why does it happen? Can you help me?

Thank you