Prolific Academic Survey Alerts

mon37

PayPal isn't good as we have to pay the percentage of our earnings.

Willing2Learn

mon37 wrote: »

PayPal isn't good as we have to pay the percentage of our earnings.

No, Prolific Academic now process payments via PayPal without a fee!


From the PA website:
Our initial payment threshold is only £5 and we ONLY PAY IN GBP (British Pounds). No fees are charged on your cash out!

mon37

Great! I didn't know that.

Miró

Did anyone else do this study recently?

Lab of Misfits Gp2_S1+
Hosted by Richard Clarke

If so did you get the following communication this evening....

Hello all. You've recently either completed or attempted to complete a study run by us. For those that did not finish, the study was designed to evoke mild frustration by various methods - from spelling errors, buffering and repetition to apparent technical failures and the removal of a 'bonus'. Firstly to all those who quit the study before we were able to take your data (and hence get you paid) - let me sincerely apologise. This may not particularly mitigate your frustration with us, but it's something I feel I absolutely must do. Secondly to those whom I was forced to reject request for payments, I have asked Prolific to ensure that your ratings are not affected. Though i have no direct control over their processes, I very much hope that they will do this. Our work here is part of an effort to find ways to more effectively manage 'tech frustration', and in this, all of you have played an important part. Thank you very much for that. I hope that this, in some small way, serves to reduce your understandable irritation. Best wishes and kind regards Dr Rich Clarke

I spent ages working on this study until I hit the built in 'technical issues' and could get no further with it so ended up returning it snd so will not be paid for my time. Seems rather unethical to me for people to be asked to work on a lengthy study when it is specifically designed to be uncompleteable!!!

Hermia

Mir! wrote: »

Did anyone else do this study recently?

Lab of Misfits Gp2_S1+
Hosted by Richard Clarke

If so did you get the following communication this evening....

Hello all. You've recently either completed or attempted to complete a study run by us. For those that did not finish, the study was designed to evoke mild frustration by various methods - from spelling errors, buffering and repetition to apparent technical failures and the removal of a 'bonus'. Firstly to all those who quit the study before we were able to take your data (and hence get you paid) - let me sincerely apologise. This may not particularly mitigate your frustration with us, but it's something I feel I absolutely must do. Secondly to those whom I was forced to reject request for payments, I have asked Prolific to ensure that your ratings are not affected. Though i have no direct control over their processes, I very much hope that they will do this. Our work here is part of an effort to find ways to more effectively manage 'tech frustration', and in this, all of you have played an important part. Thank you very much for that. I hope that this, in some small way, serves to reduce your understandable irritation. Best wishes and kind regards Dr Rich Clarke

I spent ages working on this study until I hit the built in 'technical issues' and could get no further with it so ended up returning it snd so will not be paid for my time. Seems rather unethical to me for people to be asked to work on a lengthy study when it is specifically designed to be uncompleteable!!!

I would message them. They make it sound like the study should have been possible to complete even if it was annoying. If it was actually not possible to complete they should not be denying payment for non-completion.

PWEM

Mir! wrote: »

Did anyone else do this study recently?

Lab of Misfits Gp2_S1+
Hosted by Richard Clarke

I spent ages working on this study until I hit the built in 'technical issues' and could get no further with it so ended up returning it snd so will not be paid for my time. Seems rather unethical to me for people to be asked to work on a lengthy study when it is specifically designed to be uncompleteable!!!

Did the 'technical failures' make you unable to continue or did you decide to give up?
At which point did you have 'technical issues'?
I had 'recording failures' twice when I had to describe the room I was in and was told 'no bonus' consequently. I was actually relieved that my voice recoding wasn't analysed.

Pre-study brief said this:
Please make every effort to complete the study by following the instructions exactly. Please be patient and DO NOT give up if you are able to proceed.

I found the study rather fun and got paid within a few hours.

Miró

PWEM wrote: »

Did the 'technical failures' make you unable to continue or did you decide to give up?
At which point did you have 'technical issues'?
I had 'recording failures' twice when I had to describe the room I was in and was told 'no bonus' consequently. I was actually relieved that my voice recoding wasn't analysed.

Pre-study brief said this:
Please make every effort to complete the study by following the instructions exactly. Please be patient and DO NOT give up if you are able to proceed.

I found the study rather fun and got paid within a few hours.

Pleased to hear some people managed to complete this survey and got paid. I had lots of elements not making sense, repeated stages and problems with the microphone stage. From reading the brief I did begin to suspect that it was a 'designed to fail' survey so I persisted until I was stuck at one stage for about 20 mins. Not being able to get unstuck I felt there was no alternative but to return the survey rather than risk running out of time and there being negative consequences. Rather than just being disappointed in not being paid I'm more interested in the ethics of running such a survey where some people are going to invest a great deal of time in the expectation of being paid for their time yet the survey is designed to be impossible for them to complete.

Bennettxoxo

Bennettxoxo wrote: »

Investment Research
Hosted by SRA Research
£1.20 10 minutes £7.20/hr 2511 places remaining

Did anyone else complete this and is still waiting for it to be reviewed and receive payment for it? I completed it on the 18/07/2019.

silverfairy

Bennettxoxo wrote: »

Did anyone else complete this and is still waiting for it to be reviewed and receive payment for it? I completed it on the 18/07/2019.

Yes, mine has not credited yet, but they have 3 weeks to approve it.

Vintage67

Hermia wrote: »

I would message them. They make it sound like the study should have been possible to complete even if it was annoying. If it was actually not possible to complete they should not be denying payment for non-completion.

I had the same problem, wasted over half an hour trying to get it to work (even tried it on 2 computers) and ending up manually completing it when I thought the timeout was approaching, and subsequently got a rejection. Complained to both the researcher and PA but got no reply from either. Unethical in my opinion - I can understand what they were testing but should still pay those that spent the time on it.

There are also people complaining about this on PA's Reddit forum https://www.reddit.com/r/ProlificAc/ although PA themselves have not commented so far.