Prolific Academic Survey Alerts

ndf9876

Cordie said:

ndf9876 said:

Morning fellow Prolific workers!

I don't know about you, but I've hardly had any studies over the past few weeks. This is beyond what I usually experience within the NEAT framework - I'm talking like maybe one study every 4 days or so. 

Anyway, turns out someone did a TikTok promoting Prolific, and the participant pool doubled overnight - interesting blog post here if anyone is interested : https://blog.prolific.co/we-recently-went-viral-on-tiktok-heres-what-we-learned/

That's an interesting read ndf9876 I thought something was different as I have had my worst month since joining.  I use the Prolific Assistant but I am now not quick enough to get the surveys.  It pinged the other day with 63 places remaining but it was leased out even though I had gone directly to the survey.

The places being filled up quickly is, I think, partly to do with some people using scripts \ client-side tools to automatically accept studies. I think Prolific are looking at those too, and I know of at least one participant who was banned for using them. So hopefully things will improve somewhat for us!

heatherw_01

I haven't had surveys in ages and I asked why and got this reply.
Makes no sense as what info they have is all right. Absolutely ridiculous! I am well annoyed as this was money that went for food (disabled & cant work)

I'm afraid you won't be able to take part in further studies on Prolific because your account has failed one or more of our automated checks, as well as our manual review. Unfortunately, I can't give you any further information about the specifics of these checks and won't be able to reverse the decision.

You can still cash out any money in your account.

I must stress that, while we thank you for your interest in the platform, this decision is very much final. We're also unable to allow restricted participants to create new accounts, so please don't attempt this.

allison445

heatherw_01 said:

I haven't had surveys in ages and I asked why and got this reply.
Makes no sense as what info they have is all right. Absolutely ridiculous! I am well annoyed as this was money that went for food (disabled & cant work)

I'm afraid you won't be able to take part in further studies on Prolific because your account has failed one or more of our automated checks, as well as our manual review. Unfortunately, I can't give you any further information about the specifics of these checks and won't be able to reverse the decision.

You can still cash out any money in your account.

I must stress that, while we thank you for your interest in the platform, this decision is very much final. We're also unable to allow restricted participants to create new accounts, so please don't attempt this.

according to there blog you can appeal a ban

Overturning bans

We know that sometimes our systems can get things wrong and ban people from our platform incorrectly. If banned participants feel this is the case, they can get in touch with our friendly support team who will review the account and decide whether to uphold or remove the ban.

To give some perspective on this, the number of active users (participants who have been active in the last 90 days) we currently have on the platform is ~140,000 (as of Jan 2021). We calculated that, on average over a 3-month period, our support team removed bans for 133 participants. We think this shows we're pretty accurate with our checks.

ElefantEd

allison445 said:

heatherw_01 said:

I haven't had surveys in ages and I asked why and got this reply.
Makes no sense as what info they have is all right. Absolutely ridiculous! I am well annoyed as this was money that went for food (disabled & cant work)

I'm afraid you won't be able to take part in further studies on Prolific because your account has failed one or more of our automated checks, as well as our manual review. Unfortunately, I can't give you any further information about the specifics of these checks and won't be able to reverse the decision.

You can still cash out any money in your account.

I must stress that, while we thank you for your interest in the platform, this decision is very much final. We're also unable to allow restricted participants to create new accounts, so please don't attempt this.

according to there blog you can appeal a ban

Overturning bans

We know that sometimes our systems can get things wrong and ban people from our platform incorrectly. If banned participants feel this is the case, they can get in touch with our friendly support team who will review the account and decide whether to uphold or remove the ban.

To give some perspective on this, the number of active users (participants who have been active in the last 90 days) we currently have on the platform is ~140,000 (as of Jan 2021). We calculated that, on average over a 3-month period, our support team removed bans for 133 participants. We think this shows we're pretty accurate with our checks.

Surely their accuracy would depend on how many bans have been removed compared to the number of bans. 133 unbanned out of 133,000 bans would be pretty good; 133 unbanned out of 134 would indicate that their checks are wildly inaccurate!

ndf9876

heatherw_01 said:

I haven't had surveys in ages and I asked why and got this reply.
Makes no sense as what info they have is all right. Absolutely ridiculous! I am well annoyed as this was money that went for food (disabled & cant work)

I'm afraid you won't be able to take part in further studies on Prolific because your account has failed one or more of our automated checks, as well as our manual review. Unfortunately, I can't give you any further information about the specifics of these checks and won't be able to reverse the decision.

You can still cash out any money in your account.

I must stress that, while we thank you for your interest in the platform, this decision is very much final. We're also unable to allow restricted participants to create new accounts, so please don't attempt this.

As others have said, you do have the right of appeal. There are myriad reasons for being banned, but I know Prolific are cracking down on the use of scripts to accept studies, as well as multiple page refreshes. Other than that, VPN, browser add-on or telling porkies within a study (and getting reported by a researcher) are also pretty common, I think.

allison445

ElefantEd said:

allison445 said:

heatherw_01 said:

I haven't had surveys in ages and I asked why and got this reply.
Makes no sense as what info they have is all right. Absolutely ridiculous! I am well annoyed as this was money that went for food (disabled & cant work)

I'm afraid you won't be able to take part in further studies on Prolific because your account has failed one or more of our automated checks, as well as our manual review. Unfortunately, I can't give you any further information about the specifics of these checks and won't be able to reverse the decision.

You can still cash out any money in your account.

I must stress that, while we thank you for your interest in the platform, this decision is very much final. We're also unable to allow restricted participants to create new accounts, so please don't attempt this.

according to there blog you can appeal a ban

Overturning bans

We know that sometimes our systems can get things wrong and ban people from our platform incorrectly. If banned participants feel this is the case, they can get in touch with our friendly support team who will review the account and decide whether to uphold or remove the ban.

To give some perspective on this, the number of active users (participants who have been active in the last 90 days) we currently have on the platform is ~140,000 (as of Jan 2021). We calculated that, on average over a 3-month period, our support team removed bans for 133 participants. We think this shows we're pretty accurate with our checks.

Surely their accuracy would depend on how many bans have been removed compared to the number of bans. 133 unbanned out of 133,000 bans would be pretty good; 133 unbanned out of 134 would indicate that their checks are wildly inaccurate!

Yes its hard to work out as they dont actually say how many people got banned in the 3 month period just how many had there ban removed

Tomatillo

Has anyone been rejected from this site from the start? I put in all my details, took their starting survey with no problems, verified my email, phone no and did the scan of my driving licence etc then got this message but I have no idea why.

We're sorry, we can't give you access to Prolific

We’re sorry to say that following a review of your account, we won’t be able to give you access to Prolific. We understand that this is disappointing for you. You can do further reading about what we ask of participants here.

Thanks for your interest in signing up to Prolific and for taking time to apply.

Sapindus

I've also had a dire few weeks.  Luckily I have very nearly enough money to cash out and one study waiting for approval which will get me there.  It is what it is, at the end of the day they've obviously got so many participants they can afford to offend a few with summary bans and we have zero leverage to argue.  So if I never get another study, it was good while it lasted and I haven't staked anything on expecting it to continue.  C'est la vie!

ldee2111

Last month I only made £2.17. ☹️ I was really enjoying the surveys too. But as you say @Sapindus c’est la vie

Sapindus

And I do have some advantages over 30,000 24-year-old females - if there are any more menopause studies I'm your woman!