Prolific Academic Survey Alerts

yupiteru

elsien said:

Factor analysis, Jason Brown.
50p for 21 minutes,  1.42 an hour.

Was going to report it but someone has been daft enough to accept the place and it's vanished again. Talk about taking the proverbial. 

It is our 'friend' from Cardiff again sometimes known as YT Wang, Yating Wang, SKK, JK etc, just trying it on under a different name.

It's curious, I wonder what the motive really is?

Ivana_B_Rich

yupiteru said:

elsien said:

Factor analysis, Jason Brown.
50p for 21 minutes,  1.42 an hour.

Was going to report it but someone has been daft enough to accept the place and it's vanished again. Talk about taking the proverbial. 

It is our 'friend' from Cardiff again sometimes known as YT Wang, Yating Wang, SKK, JK etc, just trying it on under a different name.

It's curious, I wonder what the motive really is?

More aliases than Grant Shapps this one 

Maybe I'm naive but I think he's really doing research, albeit badly, and trying to do it on the cheap. What I don't understand is why not simply use one of the other survey sites where there's no minimum?

There are enough bin end sites available where he could pay pitiful amounts and wouldn't have to make the effort to circumvent Prolific's policy 

fly-catchers

I did “Study ~45-50 minutes” yesterday which was paid £6.25 straightaway. It was a bit tedious where you had to select the last word shown when it was displaying a range of words one after another. I see the survey is agin listed for me. I wouldn’t want to attempt it again if at the end it saids I have already completed it. But if it’s listed does that mean I should qualify? Currently away from my computer so can’t start it now anyway. So might be a bit of moot point. But in general if they list similar or identical surveys will that mean you do qualify?

yupiteru

Ivana_B_Rich said:

yupiteru said:

elsien said:

Factor analysis, Jason Brown.
50p for 21 minutes,  1.42 an hour.

Was going to report it but someone has been daft enough to accept the place and it's vanished again. Talk about taking the proverbial. 

It is our 'friend' from Cardiff again sometimes known as YT Wang, Yating Wang, SKK, JK etc, just trying it on under a different name.

It's curious, I wonder what the motive really is?

More aliases than Grant Shapps this one 

Maybe I'm naive but I think he's really doing research, albeit badly, and trying to do it on the cheap. What I don't understand is why not simply use one of the other survey sites where there's no minimum?

There are enough bin end sites available where he could pay pitiful amounts and wouldn't have to make the effort to circumvent Prolific's policy 

Someone on another Prolific forum has contacted the relevant Cardiff university (there are 3 in Cardiff) who's account the studies originate from and they have suggested that the studies are being placed by an ex student who still has access to the account.

I assume it is not as simple as it appears, as you would have thought they could just block the offending account?

It may answer the question though, if they have access to the cardiff.qualtrics.com account free of charge.

I assumed that once a student left the university their accounts would no longer be valid but maybe they just rely on the goodwill of the ex students?

Either way, the plot thickens..........

elsien

yupiteru said:

elsien said:

Factor analysis, Jason Brown.
50p for 21 minutes,  1.42 an hour.

Was going to report it but someone has been daft enough to accept the place and it's vanished again. Talk about taking the proverbial. 

It is our 'friend' from Cardiff again sometimes known as YT Wang, Yating Wang, SKK, JK etc, just trying it on under a different name.

It's curious, I wonder what the motive really is?

Update. Reported when it reappeared. I think I may go back to them with all the pseudonyms. 

Thanks so much for letting us know about this study.
 
We've now paid you a bonus of £1.80 from Prolific to bring this study back up to our minimum reward rate. We will also be contacting the researcher about this and asking that they review the reward rate for their study.
 
We really appreciate you being vigilant. If you have any more questions about this, just reply here.

yupiteru

How do people respond to being hurt? T1

By adelaide.edu.au

0 places

In this study you will be asked to recall a time in the last month where your romantic partner hurt your feelings

£1.20 • £5.39/hr

13 mins

I attempted to access this study first thing this morning but got the dreaded PEC-SUB-0002 error message box pop up on my screen, which as we all know is caused by the Prolific system detecting a problem with my IP address, so I could not initially get a place.

As the Internet account I have offers a dynamic IP address allocation, I was able reset my router to generate a new IP but I still got the PEC-SUB-0002 error, so obviously the system did not like that one either.

I reset the router once more and this time My IP was deemed to be OK and luckily there were enough places left and I accessed and completed the study.

My original IP address that was flagged was the same one that I successfully completed a study with yesterday and I was PEC-SUB-0002 error free on that occasion.

This leads me to the conclusion that Prolific are on occasions implementing IP range bans and that my first 2 IP addresses were caught within the range and obviously the third IP address generated after the second router reset was outside of the set range.

This happens occasionally to me as it does to many others by all accounts, but it is unusual for me to have to reset the router twice to circumvent the restriction.

MollyR

When I started getting that problem, I obtained a static IP from my ISP for a fiver.  This means that the IP never ends up on spam blacklists, because it is never used by anybody other than this household;  so there have been no problems since.  And it is much easier than constantly re-booting the router, which I used to find very tedious.

yupiteru

fly-catchers said:

I did “Study ~45-50 minutes” yesterday which was paid £6.25 straightaway. It was a bit tedious where you had to select the last word shown when it was displaying a range of words one after another. I see the survey is agin listed for me. I wouldn’t want to attempt it again if at the end it saids I have already completed it. But if it’s listed does that mean I should qualify? Currently away from my computer so can’t start it now anyway. So might be a bit of moot point. But in general if they list similar or identical surveys will that mean you do qualify?

Researchers have the ability to restrict previous participants from taking the study again within the setting at their disposal.

Maybe the study is slightly different this time around or possibly the researcher forgot to set the filter or they do not mind if you do take it again, either way you should be able to access any study that appears for you without any negative consequences.

I think I completed the study you are referring to and for some of the words I felt there was something a bit deceptive going on intentionally, but I think it was quite good fun compared to some of the tick box exercises that you can be presented with.

yupiteru

elsien said:

yupiteru said:

elsien said:

Factor analysis, Jason Brown.
50p for 21 minutes,  1.42 an hour.

Was going to report it but someone has been daft enough to accept the place and it's vanished again. Talk about taking the proverbial. 

It is our 'friend' from Cardiff again sometimes known as YT Wang, Yating Wang, SKK, JK etc, just trying it on under a different name.

It's curious, I wonder what the motive really is?

Update. Reported when it reappeared. I think I may go back to them with all the pseudonyms. 

Thanks so much for letting us know about this study.
 
We've now paid you a bonus of £1.80 from Prolific to bring this study back up to our minimum reward rate. We will also be contacting the researcher about this and asking that they review the reward rate for their study.
 
We really appreciate you being vigilant. If you have any more questions about this, just reply here.

That's good, I wonder if this is what they intend doing from now on with grossly underpaying studies?

yupiteru

An Experimental Study of Personal Vulnerability to Infectious Disease

By vu.nl

-1 place

£1.00 • £5.23/hr

11 mins

Anyone else complete this study on May 17th but not yet received payment?

It is now over the 22 day period and the automatic payment has not happened for some reason.  I received a message yesterday from the researcher stating they had approved the submission but payment did not happen.

Lucky that they contacted me as I may have let it slip through the net.

Contacted support with all the details this morning and I assume that it is just another Prolific technical issue that the platform seems to be plagued with.

I have received other payments for studies completed over the last couple of days so it is not as if my account is on hold.

Edit - Just been paid for this study after 24 days, just more prolific strangeness.