Prolific

Summary

Update: Prolific have announced that they’ll be discontinuing their use of Circle Pay on 26th June 2019. PayPal withdrawals will become fee free!

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Prolific is a service which helps researchers find participants for their studies. The studies are all carried out on computer via the Prolific website and do not require either the researcher or participant to travel to participate. Participants are paid varying amounts for taking part.

When new studies are available these will be shown on the site homepage or you will sometime be alerted via E-Mail.

I feel that the pay tends to be quite fair and the amount of effort is generally fairly limited. I can confirm that the site is legitimate, having received a single payout for a number of studies I took part in.

Payment is processed using either Paypal or Circle. If you choose to receive your payment via either service there may be a fee involved.

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Ratings

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Fun:

How does it work?

Prolific is a service which helps researchers find participants for their studies. The studies are all carried out on computer via the Prolific website and do not require either the researcher or participant to travel to participate. Participants are paid varying amounts for taking part.

I only have experience using the site as a participant so cannot discuss how the site operates for researchers.

When you first sign up to Prolific it is helpful to complete your profile as this is used to match you with appropriate studies. Your profile contains information on a variety of topics, some of which could be regarded as very personal. No question is mandatory to answer however so these can be skipped if preferred.

When new studies are available these will be shown on the site homepage or you will be alerted via E-Mail. Prolific does not appear to E-Mail you about every relevant study, so to maximise your chances of taking part it is best to check the homepage regularly.

It is possible to have your submission rejected by the researcher if they think you did not pay adequate attention but this rarely happens and it is possible to contact them to ask for the result to be reassessed or to ask for their reasoning. I was rejected for one study and contacted the researcher. They replied promptly, detailing their reasons. It turned out I’d misunderstood something fundamental so it was my fault and the rejection was justified.

Payment is processed using either Paypal or Circle. If you choose to receive your payment via either service there may be a fee involved.

Opinion

I’ve used Prolific a fair amount but admittedly have used it far less recently.

Although the studies are often interesting and fun the main disadvantage for me is that you studies are only available for a limited time to a fairly small number of participants and there is no obvious frequency for when the studies are activated. This means that I often visited the site to find no studies available.

Having said that, Prolific will E-Mail you about studies that it thinks you will be a good match for and the frequency of E-Mails has been fairly steady recently (roughly between every 3 and 7 days).

One disadvantage is that it can take a fairly long time for your submission to be accepted, although this depends completely on the researcher and how busy they are/how motivated they are to process their submissions.

I feel that the pay tends to be quite fair and the amount of effort is generally fairly limited.

I can confirm that the site is legitimate, having received a single payout for a number of studies I took part in.

I opted to use Circle for withdrawal as I would not be charged any fees because the total withdrawn was over £20. Although it was nice to not be charged I found it very awkward to get myself verified with Circle due to their software not accepting my passport details. This was eventually resolved but was irritating. If I’d realised it would be so involved I may have just chosen to use Paypal.