Having a hard time understand prescreening

⛑ Community Support
1

Hi everyone,

I am totally new here and actually new to this type of research in general. I am creating my first survey in Google Forms to be used in my first Prolific study.

The prescreening section of the Google integration page has me a bit confused. If I am prescreening participants in my study, why do I need to add the prescreening section (section 3) to the survey?

In my case, I am screening for ages (21-50) and location (any US state). I’m really struggling to understand this.

I could really use some assistance here if possible.

Thanks :slight_smile:

2

Hi Ben
Welcome to the forums :slight_smile:
You don’t have to prescreen again inside your survey but

  1. It serves as a double check
  2. It serves as an attention check
  3. It is an attention check that (unlike other attention checks) we are allowed to eject participants from the survey if they get the answers wrong (inconsistent with their “About You” prescreening information), as long as the questions are asked with exactly the same words. Ordinarily one has to ensure that more than one attention check was answered incorrectly within a 5 plus minute study, and then use the “Reject” function, which can only be done a certain number of times.

It does not take long to set up, you can resuse that part of the survey, so I recommend it.

Tim

3

Hey Tim,

Thanks for your reply.

How do I know exactly how to word these questions? This study will be short, I estimate 2-3 minutes. Would one prescreener be sufficient?

Is there a way to have my Google Forms survey looked at by someone on your team before putting it live on Prolific?

Thanks!

4

Ben

I think one prescreener would be sufficient.

To find the wording,

  1. in the study details click on “Add another one?”
  2. the categories in which you have added prescreeners will have circled blue numbers beside them indicating how many you’ve added from each category. Click on a category and find the prescreener you’ve added
  3. The wording will be given after "Participants were asked the following question: " and the options will be the same as given below that.

There is a way of having someone look at your survey, but it costs a little bit of money. For instance I charge £16 an hour. I think it would be about 2ukp. Details below.

Or, and this is what I have done to be honest, you can open your study to a few participants, and include a “How can we correct or improve this study?” question with a text field. Then you can add places to your study after editing it a bit if there aren’t any complaints.

Tim