Length of studies

What is the average length of studies on Prolific? I am wondering if there is any evidence for participants opting for shorter studies?

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The median study duration on Prolific is approximately 10 minutes, with 50% of studies being between 5 and 15 minutes in duration. 25% are <5 minutes and 25% are > 15 minutes. That being said, we’ve still successfully run hundreds of studies of longer duration :slight_smile:

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Thank you very much for the information! To follow-up quickly, in a recent conversation with a professor who ran studies here before, she mentioned that she heard a lot of participants set a hard boundary at 30 minutes… I was wondering if subjects are indeed able to set study length preferences and if so whether there is a way to filter that?

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That’s very interesting. It’s not something I’ve heard before.

In fact, we did a survey of 1000 participants asking them what factors encourage them to take part in studies. The results were:

  • 47% said the amount of pay was the biggest factor encouraging them to participate
  • 22% said it was chiefly due to interest in the topic.
  • 17% said it was length of the study

Given that only 17% cited length & since many researchers have already done it successfully on our platform, you’ll be okay to run a longer than average study.

I was wondering if subjects are indeed able to set study length preferences and if so whether there is a way to filter that?

Participants aren’t able to filter studies by length, but obviously they can choose to not do ones that go over personal limits.

Hope that helps! :slight_smile:

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