Open up survey to past participant

1

One of the participants incorrectly responded to one of the first questions in my Qualtrics survey, which made them ineligible to complete the study. How do I re-send them the link in Prolific so that they can re-start the survey? Right now, I only have the option to mail them, pay them even though they did not complete the study, or reject them.

Thank you in advance.

2

Hi @Francoise_Cadigan,

In this case, you might want to consider the following options:

  1. You can send your survey link to the participant through the Prolific message system and ask the participant to manually enter the completion code on Prolific once he/she is done.
  2. You can create (copy or duplicate) a new study specifically for this person by following the steps here How to invite specific participants to your study – Prolific

Good luck :slight_smile: !

3

Hi @Francoise_Cadigan,

I’ll add on to @Chloe_Nguyen’s great response and just mention that if you have Qualtrics set so each participant can only complete the survey once, in addition to either 1. or 2. in the previous response, you’ll need to duplicate the Qualtrics survey for them (or ask them to complete on a different computer or “private” browser window). This can get quite irritatingly complex.

When I encountered this issue, I ended up asking the participant to “return” the study. If they spent a significant amount of time, perhaps partial compensation would be a good idea. But if they return the study, it will avoid both the rejection and the approval (help page when you need to request a return vs. reject here)

4

Thank you both for your responses. I used Chloe’s suggestion. I wonder if it worked based on the nuances mentioned by P.P. The participant did not spend a long time in the survey so having them ‘return’ will not merit payment. If they return the study, the only options are to pay or message them. I typically ignore those participants especially if not a lot of time was spent in the survey. Why do participants return the study? I do not understand that.

5

Hi @Francoise_Cadigan, if you recorded the Prolific PID in the Qualtrics survey, you can check to see if the data is present!

Participants return for many reasons. One is that they can “reserve” a spot in the study, but they have to start the study within a certain amount of time. It might be the case that those participants who reserve, but they look at the details and decide they don’t want to participate count as a return. Other times, they might have something come up and need to stop, encounter a technical problem, or they might find the study too cumbersome.

6

Thank you, @paul.

2 Likes
7

Hello P.P,

For participants who returned the study for this reason:
‘One is that they can “reserve” a spot in the study, but they have to start the study within a certain amount of time’
How long can they reserve the spot? I have a participant who did that in a longitudinal study, I don’t know if they want to drop out or just reserve a spot. So I am thinking what is the good timing to get in touch to see if they had accidentally returned and still wish to participate or they no longer wish to continue. Thank you.

1 Like
8

Hi @Winnie_Lam! I think that once a participant “returns” their submission, we can safely assume that they are no longer interested in participating. In fact, when you download the demographic information I think prolific marks returned submissions as “consent revoked”. So I would go ahead and try to recruit a new participant