First-time prolific user. We are planning on running a survey, 15 minutes. We plan to pay $2.50 for the survey and offer a $1 bonus. We only need 200 participants. I am not sure how much to transfer into the account because I do not know how many participants will earn the bonus. If I add $600 into the account, that should cover the study, but does the unused money return to us?
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Hello Jeff, welcome to the Forum!
Iām not from Prolific Team but I guess there is no way to get the Prolific credits refunded unless there is any exceptional event. Good news is that you can start charging your account with the money expected to cover the fixed study costs (i.e. the fixed payment of $2.50 x 200 participants + fees). Youāll be able to publish your study as long as your account covers the Total costs shown in the stage of creation of the study. Below an example of breakdown:
Youāll then - after all participants completed the study and you calculated the bonuses earned - be able to charge the extra money needed to cover also the bonus payments.
Anyway, letās wait for the final word of @Josh on this. 
Cheers,
Veronica
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Hey @jeff_Pool, welcome to the community!
Donāt worry, you can get a refund on any money you add to your account. We just donāt offer refunds on āProlific Creditā i.e. money earned via a referral.
To request a refund, contact our team here
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Thank you both for the prompt responses. As a state university, we have a tax free exemption. How does that work with VAT? I donāt think we are allowed to contract with any company that would charge us a tax. How do you handle working with US universities in this regard?
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You donāt need to worry about VAT as an American researcher. The VAT box is only really there for European Union VAT members.
Josh,
I am having a problem with my study, a lot of the participants did not include their prolific id number. I added that as the first question in the study like yāall wanted.
I need their demographic information for my study.
What do you suggest?
Best,
Jeff
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If you are using services like Qualtrics, you can record Prolific ID (as embedded data) without asking your participants for their IDs.
Something good for me to know next time. What do I do about the ones that didnāt provide the number as requested? I donāt even know who to pay.
| ScienField
11 August |
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If you are using services like Qualtrics, you can record Prolific ID (as embedded data) without asking your participants for their IDs.
I had a similar problem as yours. I forgot to include the ids as embedded data in Qualtrics. But, I was able to get them after the fact. However, this might be only applicable if you have āIāll use URL parametersā under āHow to record Prolific dataā in the study details activated prior to you publishing the study.
Hey @jeff_Pool
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to retroactively get a participantsā ID. This is why we recommend that you automatically record them using URL parameters, or make the ID input section mandatory within your survey.
That being said, there are two options that may work:
- You can try to link the data by matching the start/end times on Prolific with the times recorded in your survey software.
- We can try to link the data via IP addresses, but this will only work if your software has recorded their IP addresses.
Iām sorry that I donāt have better news.
Josh
I did make input of their prolific ID number mandatory in the first item in the survey. However, I do have their IP addresses. I will send you those shortly.
Also I noticed that my call track survey had a randomizer feature on it that would automatically put the participants in one of two groups. However that seemed not to have happened everyone went in the first group.
Is it possible to use some of the $300 referral bonus that I got to run some participants through the other part of the survey?
Thanks for all your help and sorry to be such a pain. Iāve really heard great things about prolific and wanting to give yāall a try instead of just using MTurk. This is our labs first trial run with yāall. I think it has a lot of promise.
Best
Jeff
Hey @jeff_Pool
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to retroactively get a participantsā ID. This is why we recommend that you automatically record them using URL parameters, or make the ID input section mandatory within your survey.
That being said, there are two options that may work:
- You can try to link the data by matching the start/end times on Prolific with the times recorded in your survey software.
- We can try to link the data via IP addresses, but this will only work if your software has recorded their IP addresses.
Iām sorry that I donāt have better news.
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Josh,
Disregard my previous request to run more subjects.
Here are the list of respondentsās wifi addresses. Youāll see about half didnāt provide their number. Can you help match them up so I can pay them?
Thanks,
Jeff
(Attachment IP address.csv is missing)
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Iāve responded to your DM
Thanks, I just sent in the spreadsheet!
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Brilliant - let me know what your support ticket number is, and Iāll make sure itās prioritised