Hi,
I was wondering if anyone has any insights into how often it is that a participant would reject taking the study after reading the consent form?
I’m not going to be collecting any personal information in my study, but I’m sure there will still be some participants that click into the survey, then decide not to take it. I’m worried about going over the response limits that I have on the platform that I’m using the host my survey. Unfortunately, the platform records it as a legitimate response even if the participant just answers the one question on consent.
It is extremely rare in my experience (i.e. I almost never see it). I suspect the scenario where it’s more frequent is where the researcher hasn’t used prescreeners properly and instead flags new screening criteria in the information sheet. If you use prescreeners properly and flag any especially notable features of the study in the Prolific ad you probably won’t get any noes.
This said, there are other reasons why the N on the survey platform side might exceed the N of completion codes on the Prolific side (e.g. returned and timed out submissions). So having a sample size limit on the survey side carries a very real risk of causing hassles. This is an especial problem with Gorilla, which often causes participants to click through to a study that’s still being advertised on Prolific only to find that Gorilla says it’s already full.
More info about Gorilla integration here, if that’s your platform: Gorilla integration guide – Prolific