I am looking to use prolific for the first time to recruit participants for my study. I plan to use the custom screening option and share my survey with participants who meet the inclusion criteria. For e.g. have to be working, use a smartphone and/or laptop for work, use emails and other forms of electronic communication technology.
my first question is: I can’t see a category of people who use electronic communication technology for work, so how do I ensure that criteria are included in the customer screening.
my second question is: will I get all the demographic information about my participants who have completed the survey? This means we will get all the information about the participants based on the prescreening criteria. is this correct? Or should I ask them questions about their age, gender, working status, etc? If I will get all that information from prolific, that would also mean I can save time on the survey length.
I have asked the same question and the request number is 103317 but I haven’t heard back. Is there any other way we can get answers to questions? Reading threads is time-consuming and there are so many.
my first question is : I can’t see a category of people who use electronic communication technology for work, so how do I ensure that criteria are included in the customer screening.
We have a filter that might be helpful for you:
Technology use at work - (Participants were asked the following question: Please think about a specific technology (e.g., software) that you are required to use at work. How often do you use it?)
my second question is : will I get all the demographic information about my participants who have completed the survey
Along with the data for criteria you screen for, you’ll get basic demographic data like age, gender, and employment status. Check out the full list of included data here. If anything that you need is not on that list, make sure that you prescreen for it because we won’t be able to provide it after the fact.
Hope that helps! Let me know if I can clarify anything
Since the pre-screening responses will be provided, do I still ask the the pre-screening questions in my survey? I read a blog that I should ask pre-screening questions again in my survey to match the responses. If that is the case, then how many of the pre-screening questions do I ask? Which ones should I ask to ensure I can match the prolific ID to that screen question? If I ask all questions, the survey length will increase.
You don’t need to ask them again. We only advise that if you want to be extra sure that participants are who they say they are. But we carry out data-quality checks to weed out untrustworthy participants, so I wouldn’t worry too much.
That being said, if there is a particular prescreener is absolutely crucial to the results of your study, then it wouldn’t hurt to reconfirm that info.
thank you for the prompt replies. they are really helpful.
Hopefully this is the last question for this thread. if there is one or two screening questions that are most likely to be unique and that can help me with double check the participants, what would those be? I thought of date of birth, but chances are there could be two people with the same d.o.b. Any other you suggest?
if there is one or two screening questions that are most likely to be unique and that can help me with double check the participants, what would those be?
I think this really depends on your survey! I can tell you my opinion: it is really unlikely to find someone who has lied in the date of birth or gender question of the “About You” section (that is the questionnaire that participants need to fill-in at the time of registration). However, it could be that they changed opinion on something e.g., a person who is now strongly convinced that climate change is a real issue, at the time of subsription did not have any opinion about it. So, if your survey is on environmental issues, you really want to be sure that the data you get from Prolific correspond to his/her current opinion on the topic! And therefore would need to add a pre-screening questionnaire at the beginning of your study: those whose reply does not match with the replies on the “About You” section, would need to return their submission.
I thought of date of birth, but chances are there could be two people with the same d.o.b. Any other you suggest?
I think this would not be a problem for you! Indeed, with this procedure, you just need to check that each subject puts the same date of birth in the pre-screening questionnaire that you created and in his/her “About You” section! Not that it is unique for him/her.
I have a question regarding prescreening aiming to reach people they are either highly knowledgeable or low knowledgeable relevant to an health issue or environmental risk. The idea is that asking knowledge questions at the beginning and based on the responses assigning them to the specific blocks of the survey. Additionally, participants who has moderate knowledge won’t be able to continue taking survey and will be directed to debrief.
Does it something that prolific may let the researchers to do?
Hey @Ayse_Ozsari_Sahin, welcome to the community! So glad you’ve found us
We don’t allow participants to be screened out of studies. However, there is a workaround.
You can take the two-study approach where you first run a prescreening study which identifies the participants you’d like to continue to the specific blocks of the survey. Then, you use a custom allow list to invite those participants to a 2nd full study.
I am interested in using the two-study approach to invite qualified participants to a 2nd full study. I understand that my first study - a short screener - must pay all participants who complete it. I also understand that my second study - a longer survey - can be accessed by those added to a custom allow list. I know how to collect Prolific ID’s at the beginning via URL and redirect participants back to Prolific at the end via URL.
I would like to know if there is an effective way to identify participants who meet inclusion criteria for the second study based on their answers to the first study. In the past, participants would be branched to different End of survey completion codes depending on their responses - this would let me know who qualified for the next study. Now, it seems that they all need to have the same completion code/be directed back to Prolific via URL. It seems like I’d have to look at each participant’s data to see whether they met criteria and then add them to the custom allow list. This one-at-a-time approach would be very labor intensive because my screener is long, and I imagine that many participants will take my screener who do not qualify. Is there an easier way to identify participants who meet criteria based on screener responses? Perhaps I could have participants receive different completion codes in Qualtrics and enter them in Prolific so that I know who qualifies?
Thanks Josh, and sorry I did not respond to your post sooner, Margeaux.
Please Jump to my second suggestion in the final paragraph.
I have not implemented the following method, but in response to a similar issue, where Dmitrii wanted to distinguish between two categories of participant, I suggested adding a suffix (or otherwise manipulating) the Prolific completion code
As I mentioned in my post to Dmitrii, I have found that incorrect completion codes do not result in catastrophic consequences (I have used a completely wrong completion code from a previous experiment).
I asked whether we might be allowed to manipulate completion codes in the middle of my post, but I don’t think this question was noticed.
I think this may work for you, Margeaux too. I am not sure if you can do it automatically in Qualtrix. If not you could ask subjects to copy and paste the completion code and a suffix.
We can reorder the participants according to the completion code including the suffix. You would then need to copy the completion codes of the appropriate participants, remove the suffix and paste it to a custom allow list.
And come to think of it there is an easier way. Since you will be asking the participants their Prolific ID in the study, and can rearrange the participants data in the excel file you receive from Qualtrics according to whether they qualify for the second study or not. Then you can simply select the prolific IDs of the subset of participants that qualify, and paste it to a “Custom Screener” > “Custom allowlist,” which will mean you will not need to sort the participants one by one.
It sounds like you’re recommending having participants copy and paste completion codes from my Qualtrics survey into Prolific to indicate they completed the studies - and I can have participants enter different completion codes based on their qualification for the next study. Then I can sort participants’ completion codes to collect the Prolific IDs that should be entered into the custom allow list.
I’ll give this a try. Let me know if you have any other ideas. Thanks!
