Prolific Academic Survey Alerts

Viksnco

Makingabobor2 said:

Anybody get the Market Experiment one?  I thought I was quite intelligent, but I got very confused by the instructions and failed the experiment questions!  

Yes I've just finished this, I got the questions wrong twice and just managed to get it right on the final try.  However I'm not sure if I'll get paid as it was running slow and I kept having to refresh the page and then finally I got a message saying:- 

You already have left the experiment.

You can close this window.

elsien

I did it. The instructions were ok once I'd got my head round them and it went through to the end with no problems. 

[Deleted User]

ndf9876 said:

Deleted_User said:

I have had an unusual experience this evening.  I successfully completed an 'AI' Study this evening and it was approved immediately.  The approved submission did not appear on my Prolific Account and I received an email within minutes saying that I had received a payment. - I had to click a link to claim my payment.

I logged into PayPal and the payment was there.  Since it was over £5 I transferred the payment to my bank.  

I don't know what to make of this.  (I have since received a "Response approved" about another Study - in the normal way. ) It seems a bit strange and I don't know what to make of this.  Does anyone know what would cause this?

That's really weird and whilst I can only speculate, it's really unusual. I am aware that Prolific have been working quite closely with this researcher (as you probably know, they've been publishing a great deal of studies so probably a significant client for Prolific). I wonder if they have allowed them to pay you directly rather than going through Prolific? Of course, that sets alarm bells ringing that at least your PayPal email address has been passed over without explicit consent. I don't know the Prolific Ts&Cs off the top of my head, so I couldn't say whether or not they're allowed to do this. I would imagine not.

Did you receive the "Claim your payment" email on Prolific or your personal email?

I suppose in summary : whilst unlikely, and pure speculation on my part, I wonder if Prolific have given participant PayPal emails to this researcher to facilitate direct payment. Either that, or something just plain odd \ weird \ Prolific back-end tinkering happened.

I get these AI studies quite regularly - no complaints in the run-up to the festive period - so I will keep an eye out and report back if I observe the same. It may be worth logging a Prolific support ticket as well, if you haven't already.

Thanks very much ndf9876.  The email with the link came to my own email address and not the Prolific one.  I have had two 'normal' studies since that strange one and both are on Prolific, as normal, waiting for approval.

Like you, I am always very pleased to have an AI Study and I really enjoy them.

ndf9876

Makingabobor2 said:

Anybody get the Market Experiment one?  I thought I was quite intelligent, but I got very confused by the instructions and failed the experiment questions!  

Yep, I too found the instructions needed more thought than the average survey. It didn't help that you used up one attempt if you inserted a decimal point either - no note was made of what unit the answer was required in. Still, once I re-read the instructions, I got it right. Sadly, I don't think the other two in my "group" quite twigged on to the idea that we could maximise our bonus by being smart - if there were genuinely real people making the decisions and not bots - I walked away with the show-up fee plus £1.60

olliebean

Makingabobor2 said:

Anybody get the Market Experiment one?  I thought I was quite intelligent, but I got very confused by the instructions and failed the experiment questions!  

I did this one, I got through it ok but I did think the scenario seemed unrealistically complicated. In particular at the end there was something about having paid for half of the other participants' subsidies (and them having paid for half of mine) which I didn't recall having been mentioned before being asked to vote on the subsidy, and I didn't really get how that affected the final payouts.

[Deleted User]

Re:  The Market Experiment

I 'persevered'  for about 25 minutes, struggling to get my head round the instructions for this one, before failing the attention checks and had to Return the Study, as requested. 

I must admit that I found it really frustrating but, to be fair, I have had a whole string of: "Study already full"  then had to Return this one  - so I'm a bit grumpy - apologies!.

theonlywayisup

I screenshot[ed] those instructions and felt they were so badly worded, I returned it.  The questions and the instructions were ambiguous at best.  Not wasting my time on that. 

Viksnco

Viksnco said:

Makingabobor2 said:

Anybody get the Market Experiment one?  I thought I was quite intelligent, but I got very confused by the instructions and failed the experiment questions!  

Yes I've just finished this, I got the questions wrong twice and just managed to get it right on the final try.  However I'm not sure if I'll get paid as it was running slow and I kept having to refresh the page and then finally I got a message saying:- 

You already have left the experiment.

You can close this window.

I sent a message to the Researcher about this and they replied to say they'd look into it and get back to me.   Never heard back from them but I have been paid for the study so not complaining!  From what others have said I didn't complete it properly so I'm pleased to have been paid out for it. 

fly-catchers

theonlywayisup said:

I screenshot[ed] those instructions and felt they were so badly worded, I returned it.  The questions and the instructions were ambiguous at best.  Not wasting my time on that. 

Maths was never my strongest area. But despite my best efforts couldn't get my head round it! And was rather relieved to get screened out! 

olgadapolga

fly-catchers said:

theonlywayisup said:

I screenshot[ed] those instructions and felt they were so badly worded, I returned it.  The questions and the instructions were ambiguous at best.  Not wasting my time on that. 

Maths was never my strongest area. But despite my best efforts couldn't get my head round it! And was rather relieved to get screened out! 

The instructions were poorly written but the examples given helped. The maths side of it wasn't so difficult once you got your head around it. The only maths required was for the two screening questions, it wasn't necessary for the tasks unless you wanted to work out if the bonus was correctly calculated (which it was, but I like working things like that out).