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