Prolific Academic Survey Alerts

onemouseplace

Am I misremembering - or did Prolific used to insist that the payrate for studies was at least minimum wage?  Has that changed? 

olliebean

It was never minimum wage, at least not since I joined in 2018. At the time the minimum payment was £5/hour, and it has since been raised to £6/hour. For minimum wage, try Populus Live (I think they're called Y Live now), which claims to pay £12/hour, although your mileage may vary on that.

onemouseplace

I've just had a nose through the website and found the relevant bit:

'As an absolute minimum, all researchers must pay at least £6/$8 per hour of work, and they can't set their reward lower than this. We believe that fair pay leads to better data quality. We therefore recommend researchers pay participants at least £9.00 / $12.00 per hour, while the minimum pay allowed is £6.00 / $8.00 per hour. Looking at the average stats for the year to date, average real pay was actually £12.00 / $15.00 per hour! (Data true up to September 2023.)'

I think the part I was misrembering was the recommended rate, rather than the minimum rate - and for some reason in my head I'd equated that to minimum wage!

As you were everyone!

silvercar

olliebean said:

It was never minimum wage, at least not since I joined in 2018. At the time the minimum payment was £5/hour, and it has since been raised to £6/hour. For minimum wage, try Populus Live (I think they're called Y Live now), which claims to pay £12/hour, although your mileage may vary on that.

Latest information on payment rates:

"As an absolute minimum, all researchers must pay at least £6/$8 per hour of work, and they can't set their reward lower than this. We believe that fair pay leads to better data quality. We therefore recommend researchers pay participants at least £9.00 / $12.00 per hour, while the minimum pay allowed is £6.00 / $8.00 per hour. Looking at the average stats for the year to date, average real pay was actually £12.00 / $15.00 per hour! (Data true up to September 2023.)"

from here: https://participant-help.prolific.com/hc/en-gb/articles/10581350378780-Underpaying-studies

Andrew30000

Has anyone else been put on a time out? I had regular studies since November (when I joined) but the last couple of days, nothing. After consulting the chat bot it seems I'm on a time out because I've done a lot recently,  to give everyone a fair chance. Has anyone else had this and how long did it last?

silvercar

I put the lack of surveys over the last few days down to universities not being back yet.

Tommo2448

Andrew30000 said:

Has anyone else been put on a time out? I had regular studies since November (when I joined) but the last couple of days, nothing. After consulting the chat bot it seems I'm on a time out because I've done a lot recently,  to give everyone a fair chance. Has anyone else had this and how long did it last?

Hi, yes that happens occasionally...they explain it here (post is from their researcher's website)...

https://www.prolific.com/resources/data-quality-at-prolific-part-2-naivety-and-engagement

"When it comes to distributing studies evenly, our primary tool is something called adaptive rate limiting. In essence, when the number of active participants is high relative to the number of study places available, we give priority access to participants who've spent less time taking studies recently. When studies are filling particularly slowly, we then loosen the limits and let our more 'prolific' survey takers work their magic.

This mechanism gives us several parameters we can tweak in order to distribute studies more fairly and restrict the number of "professional survey takers" on the platform. By increasing the limit, we reduce the rate at which a participant becomes non-naive, but the catch is that this accordingly slows down data collection...."

PS - and as silvercar says, other periodic reasons !

It works the other way if folk like us take "time out" - I hardly did any in November/December because of other commitments, now I get more than I can do, so am ignoring a lot.

Slinky

I can't find the summary document that Prolific sent me after 1 year's membership, but my rate worked out under £5 an hour.

ETA found it.  Works out at £4.89 an hour

olliebean

Mine worked out at just under £8.64/hour. Not sure where they're getting their "average real pay was actually £12.00 / $15.00 per hour" from, as I rarely see studies paying that much.

Blue_Mermaid

elsien said:

Blue_Mermaid said:

Submitted with a 'nocode' you mean? I didn't know you could do that before completion and no technical problems.

I still have the study window open but too late now, as I already returned it and the researcher hasn't replied yet.

Quite often you can’t, but this one did have the submit button sitting in the right-hand corner throughout the study which makes the difference.

Thanks Elsien. I didn't see the submit button. Strange, as you said it was there throughout the study. Anyway, all's well that ends well - I had a reply from the researcher today and they paid me the £6. So pleased, as I did put a lot of time and effort into it.