Prolific Academic Survey Alerts

silvercar

booklover said:

I got this too. Disappointing, as the pay was good for a minute's work! Very strange indeed Any updates from the researcher? I contacted them, but no response as yet. 

The pay rate is always shown as the pay divided by the average time taken. So if a study is expected to take 15 mins and pays £2.25, that is the standard £9 per hour. If however, everyone returns it after 1 min the pay is still £2.25, the average time by participants who have finished or rejected drops to 1minute and the pay rate becomes £135 per hour as it is now based on £2.25 for 1 minute’s work.

ElefantEd

Yes, I did the same (reported and returned it).

If a survey has a very high rate of pay with a short average time it's usually because it is problematic in some way.

SensibleSarah

Do we think the fact checking surveys are done for good? Will be gutted if so - they've been a great way of supplementing my income over the last few months. Last ones I saw were Monday 12th May and they didn't last long before being removed. 

onemouseplace

@SensibleSarah I don't know - that was the last set I had as well.  I've not had any of the side by side comparison ones for much longer either.  I really hope they come back, as others have said I know they can pull them any time, but I've really enjoyed the extra money!

MollyR

Is anybody else constantlyy (several times a day) getting pop-ups which say "A new version of Prolific is available. Refresh to get the latest version. Not refreshing may cause issues"?

cagsd

MollyR said:

Is anybody else constantlyy (several times a day) getting pop-ups which say "A new version of Prolific is available. Refresh to get the latest version. Not refreshing may cause issues"?

Yes I am, and I've just come here specifically to see if anyone else is! It's been happening every time I go to the site for about the past 3 days. It says not refreshing may cause issues - but refreshing does nothing, other than simply refreshing the page! I've just emailed support about it. 

olliebean

The weird thing is, after clicking "Refresh" on that pop-up numerous times and noticing no difference, I tried clicking "Later" instead, and am now noticing changes. Perhaps they've got their buttons the wrong way round.

The specific changes I've noticed are:

1) At the end of a study, instead of asking whether everything went well in the study it asks me to rate how difficult I found it on a 5-point scale. It says something like "We'll use your feedback to align you with future studies," which I suspect means you might get fewer of the type of studies you rate as more difficult.

2) When cancelling participation in a study there are now a lot fewer options for the reason for cancellation - not including, for example, technical problems or no longer being interested in taking part.

hobo75

Is anyone having any problems being timed out when trying to reserve a place on a study? It started a few weeks ago on my laptop by only giving me a few seconds to start a study before telling me my reservation had been cancelled. It's now spread to my phone, where I was getting about 20 seconds before, now it's timing me out after 2 seconds.

onemouseplace

olliebean said:

The weird thing is, after clicking "Refresh" on that pop-up numerous times and noticing no difference, I tried clicking "Later" instead, and am now noticing changes. Perhaps they've got their buttons the wrong way round.

The specific changes I've noticed are:

1) At the end of a study, instead of asking whether everything went well in the study it asks me to rate how difficult I found it on a 5-point scale. It says something like "We'll use your feedback to align you with future studies," which I suspect means you might get fewer of the type of studies you rate as more difficult.

2) When cancelling participation in a study there are now a lot fewer options for the reason for cancellation - not including, for example, technical problems or no longer being interested in taking part.

I think it's just actually updated today as I've been hitting Refresh still and have only seen the changes today.

I've not had to cancel participation yet, but I have been able to submit studies without rating the difficulty - I'm very suspicious about the intention to allocate studies based on how difficult or not I found them.

olliebean

onemouseplace said:

olliebean said:

The weird thing is, after clicking "Refresh" on that pop-up numerous times and noticing no difference, I tried clicking "Later" instead, and am now noticing changes. Perhaps they've got their buttons the wrong way round.

The specific changes I've noticed are:

1) At the end of a study, instead of asking whether everything went well in the study it asks me to rate how difficult I found it on a 5-point scale. It says something like "We'll use your feedback to align you with future studies," which I suspect means you might get fewer of the type of studies you rate as more difficult.

2) When cancelling participation in a study there are now a lot fewer options for the reason for cancellation - not including, for example, technical problems or no longer being interested in taking part.

I think it's just actually updated today as I've been hitting Refresh still and have only seen the changes today.

I've not had to cancel participation yet, but I have been able to submit studies without rating the difficulty - I'm very suspicious about the intention to allocate studies based on how difficult or not I found them.

Yes, I think I'm going to skip that step in future. The most common reasons I would describe a study as "difficult" would not be because it requires a lot of effort, but things like asking stupid questions without sufficient answer options, or not giving me enough information to make the judgements it's asking me to make.