Prolific Academic Survey Alerts

SensibleSarah

booklover said:

Hi everyone,

I completed this study on 8th May and received the payment of £7.50. However, I believe it should have been a lot more than that. It was conducted over Zoom and took 45 minutes. I don't  see how it could have take much less time than that. Since it stated that the payment would be £89.99 per hour, surely a more realistic payment should have been paid. 

I contacted the researcher who stated that "the complete payment is 7.50 for the interview and the couple of questions prior to it. I hope this was clear to you before you participated, I cannot send any extra payment".

Interview about your views on health and health states

By Stefan Lipman

 £7.50 • £85.99/hr

·5 mins
·   8 places

Did anyone else do this study and how long did it take you? 

Many thanks

I did this one but it definitely showed me a 45 minute time slot so my expectations were that it was a meaty one. It actually only took around 25 minutes though and it was paid straight after the zoom call ended. 

olliebean

Is anyone else finding Prolific's website intermittently very sluggish this afternoon? A couple of times I thought I might miss a study after reserving a place, because the website was taking so long to refresh and show the link to start.

[Deleted User]

Yes, olliebean, it's been very slow all afternoon , really sluggish, and the pages have also been freezing at times.  I tried changing from Chrome to Firefox but it didn't make any difference. 

It seems to be a bit more responsive now. 

I've only had one successful study today (Decision making - HHL By ucl.ac.uk)  and, thankfully, it was problem free all the way through to the Completion Code.  All the other study notifications today have been full before I could reserve a place.

Crimson

 

yupiteru

Workplace Simulation Study

By unm.edu

208 places

£1.26 • £76.87/hr

8 mins

Woke up to this one at around 6 o clock this morning and secured a place, but encountered an error message stating 'Unable to load survey'.

Also noticed that after a few page refreshes the places available rose from 217 to 220 so other participants were maybe also having a problem and returning the study?

After a few unsuccessful attempts of 'Open study in new window' I contacted the researcher and waited, but had to return the study at the point of timing out as I had received no reply.

They were based in New Mexico and it was around 11 PM there, but I find the majority of researchers do not reply to my messages regardless of the time.

elsien

Yes, I had that yesterday although tbh I put it down to my internet. 

willowcat27

olliebean said:

Is anyone else finding Prolific's website intermittently very sluggish this afternoon? A couple of times I thought I might miss a study after reserving a place, because the website was taking so long to refresh and show the link to start.

Yes, I definitely thought something was up.  I did wonder if it was just me but other websites were fine, it was only Prolific that I was having trouble with. I eventually gave up as I was lots of strange things happening - like when finishing a study, the screen would come up saying awaiting review and the 'back to studies' button, and then when I clicked on it, I would get the 'please finish this study' page as though I hadn't submitted anything.  It was definitely odd yesterday.

olliebean

Despite the problems yesterday, I managed to do half a dozen studies, worth about £10 in total, which made it a very good day as far as Prolific is concerned, and I guess worth a bit of frustration waiting for the pages to respond.

willowcat27

Have the whole morning free, I don't need to go out until 12:00 and not one study!!!!. 
It's not even as though I've had many this week, only completed about 4 in the last two days.
I am almost certain that 10 minutes before I need to go out, there will suddenly be a glut of studies all about 30 minutes long that I wont be able to take.  Urrgghhhh.

silvercar

I'm pondering these surveys which are zoom interviews that last over 30 minutes.

Pre Covid I was registered on a few market research sites that would offer in person interviews that paid £40-60 for an in person interview. There was generally a phone call and couple of emails in advance confirming details and travel time and costs. So my rough estimate would be a £50  45 minute interview would take up nearly 2 hours of my time, cost me £10 in travel costs, so leave me with £40. rate = £20 per hour 

Then Covid hit and these interviews moved to Zoom, so I would be getting £50 with no travel costs and only taking up 45 minutes of my time. rate = £67 per hour

Interviews conducted through prolific are paying £7.50. Rate= £10 per hour.

Now the rate isn't the whole story, because more than likely I wouldn't have an earning opportunity for the extra time spent in travelling. So in my mind the comparison is 40/ 50 / 7.50

But either way prolific pay rate is much poorer than "proper" market research. Particularly as a lot of market research interviews are still being conducted on Zoom for convenience.

Let's hope that more market research companies don't decide to use prolific!

allison445

silvercar said:

I'm pondering these surveys which are zoom interviews that last over 30 minutes.

Pre Covid I was registered on a few market research sites that would offer in person interviews that paid £40-60 for an in person interview. There was generally a phone call and couple of emails in advance confirming details and travel time and costs. So my rough estimate would be a £50  45 minute interview would take up nearly 2 hours of my time, cost me £10 in travel costs, so leave me with £40. rate = £20 per hour 

Then Covid hit and these interviews moved to Zoom, so I would be getting £50 with no travel costs and only taking up 45 minutes of my time. rate = £67 per hour

Interviews conducted through prolific are paying £7.50. Rate= £10 per hour.

Now the rate isn't the whole story, because more than likely I wouldn't have an earning opportunity for the extra time spent in travelling. So in my mind the comparison is 40/ 50 / 7.50

But either way prolific pay rate is much poorer than "proper" market research. Particularly as a lot of market research interviews are still being conducted on Zoom for convenience.

Let's hope that more market research companies don't decide to use prolific!

I total agree the payment for these types of studies on prolific is a lot lower than others but they can be a lot more enjoyable and the majority are usually shorter than estimated

What annoys me is the researchers which show the pay rate for the time it takes to book a time slot and not the length of the actual zoom meeting this makes it look like you are being paid £80 or £90 an hour instead of £7.50

I usually tend to avoid them but it has been a slow week so I have done 2 one was suppose to be a group interview but I was the only one who turned up so it was a lot quicker than the estimated time and the other was estimated at 30 minutes and again was shorter at 15 minutes.

Most of the ones I do from other companies pay between £20 and £80 for the hour the problem I have with some is I am not always available to take the initial phone call so I miss more than I get and a lot of them will only allow you to do one every 3 months that doesn't seem to be an issue with prolific as you can do as many a month as you can get,