Browser restriction

1

I’m looking to run a five minute survey with 4500 participants. My survey only works properly in Firefox (not Chrome, Safari, Edge). Would it be possible to require participants to use Firefox, or do you think it will be difficult to recruit enough participants? Or could the sample get skewed (perhaps Firefox users differ from other users)?

1 Like
2

Hey @Martin_Hedesstrom, welcome to the community :tada:

As we don’t have an alternative method built-in, it is okay for you to do this type of screening in your study and ask those who fail to “Return” their submission, as long as:

  1. You make the requirements clear in the Prolific study description
  2. Only a small % are expected to fail
  3. The task is short and not too demanding for participants
  4. When they cannot continue, you ask them to return their submission. Read more about this here: Return vs. Reject: When should I ask a participant to return their submission?

Note that you can also specify device compatibility on Prolific as follows: Device compatibility.

Finally, we would ask you to run a small pilot study before launching to your full sample, to check that everything is working smoothly.

Hope that helps - let me know if you have any other questions!

3

But why doesn’t Prolific have a way to select a specific browser for the participants? It is quite common to have specific browser requirements in study websites.

4

Dear Lorenzo

Welcome to the forum.

In my humble opinion, Prolific is not really a study website.

It is a participant recruitment website. As you say, study websites may well have browser requirements, including the ability to reject participants who are not using the right browser.

However, while prolific has an option on the study settings page

Which devices can participants use to take your study?

  • Mobile
  • Tablet
  • Desktop

There is no ability to specify the browser.

But as Josh says above (though policy may have changed, and he is giving an outlier, exceptional scenario) if you make it very clear in the description and then again in the first page of the study, and you are asking for a standard browser, then if you study software does not allow participants in who are not using the right browser, there is a good chance that

  1. Participants will agree to return their submission
  2. You may be able to reject those that refuse to return their submission (who will not be numerous anyway).

Good luck with your study,

Tim