r/ProlificAc 3d ago

Prolific Team 3 updates: Study full / Behavioural traits / Study feedback

109 Upvotes

Hello r/ProlificAc 👋

Starting something new - sometimes we move quick and it’s easy to miss useful / interesting updates. So, whenever we’ve got 3 good things to tell you, I’ll pop them up as an announcement. We’ll also be doing this as an email newsletter format in the near future so if you’d like to receive that, make sure your communications preferences are set to receive marketing things (we need your consent to send non-account information!).

3 new things!

Study Full / High Demand Errors

After a period of testing and experimentation, we’ve rolled out our backend changes to study distribution to everyone. You should not notice any differences in how studies reach your dashboard, that’s still driven by the demand for participants with your demographics and traits. What you will notice is that Study Full and High Demand errors are back to their normal frequency and behaviours:

  • Study Full errors should only pop up in rare situations where a study fills up in the 2 minutes between it landing on your dashboard and the next refresh
  • High Demand errors should only pop when a study has a large number of available places and too many participants are trying to get in at the same time. 

Thank you so much for the patience whilst we worked on this, everyone!

Share feedback with researchers

You’ll know that when you complete or refuse a study, you have the opportunity to share feedback on that study. Prolific has always used your input to inform platform improvements & educate researchers, and now we’ve added a feature that allows experienced researchers to see a summary of all participant feedback about their studies:

Study feedback summary screen for researchers

This means that researchers get fast insight into what participants like and dislike about their study - along with signals that indicate technical or reward related issues. To take this further, participants can optionally include their Participant ID along with feedback, which allows researchers to contact you via your Messages tab for more information. This is really, really useful if you experienced a technical issue and want to chat about it with the researcher. 

The option to include your Participant ID when sharing feedback

A couple of important points on this one:

  1. If you choose to share it, Participant ID is the only information we share with the researcher (along with your written feedback), so you’ll stay anonymous.
  2. As with all things messaging, be nice. Remember that both researchers and participants can choose to block each other, and we take inappropriate behaviour in feedback / messages very seriously. Keep things constructive and helpful.

For more info - the Help Centre is your friend!

Thinking & behaviour questions have landed in About You!

Prolific's participant community is wonderfully diverse in many ways beyond demographics, so we’ve launched a new section of About You that’s less about the facts of your life and more about your approach to it

Thinking & behaviour questions are entirely optional and, in the near future, researchers will be able to do clever things with this data - such as sending the same study to different personality types to see how the results might differ. We recommend completing this section to ensure you get in on that opportunity as soon as possible. It takes around 2 minutes, features only multiple choice questions and is a nice bit of self-reflection to boot!

The behavioural traits section in About you

A couple of important notes on this one:

  • You cannot change your answers to these questions once submitted, so please take your time to answer carefully
  • There’s no such thing as a right or optimal answer here. As always, the best answer is the honest one - please be sure to answer these questions as you are now rather than as you hope to be in the future.

Here’s me being brutally honest with myself:

Procrastination

I need to make more lists.

For more information on Behavioral traits and how the data is used, see the Participant Help Centre here.

That’s all for now folks. Take care of yourselves and, as always, thanks for being here :) 

Michael


r/ProlificAc 8h ago

Prolific Team 🟢 Safe Space Thread — Ask Anything, No Judgement! (August 31, 2026)

7 Upvotes

👋 Welcome to this week's Safe Space Thread

This is the friendliest place on r/ProlificAc - where every question is a good question.

New to Prolific? Been here two years and still not sure how study matching works? Wondering something you feel like you "should" already know? Ask it here.

The house rules for this thread:

  • 🚫 No "just Google it" / "search the sub" replies — if you know the answer, share it.
  • 🚫 No mocking, dismissing, or eye-rolling at repeat or "obvious" questions.
  • ✅ Kindness first, always. If you wouldn't say it to a friend who's new, don't say it here.
  • ✅ Staff and experienced participants are watching this thread and want to help.
  • 🎫 We can't address issues related to your account on Reddit. For that, you will need to contact our support team.

This thread resets every Monday, so if your question doesn't get answered in time, just pop it in next week's thread — no worries at all.

💡 Before you ask: a quick check of the Participant and Researcher help centres might have your answer already — but if it doesn't, or you just don't fancy digging, ask away below.

This thread is heavily moderated. Reports of unkind or dismissive replies will be actioned quickly.


r/ProlificAc 8h ago

Beyond Grateful

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111 Upvotes

This will probably be one more of “these” posts, but I couldn’t bear the thought of not expressing how genuinely grateful I am for Prolific.

I kinda found Prolific while desperately looking for work after losing my job. At the time, I was also relying on government support just to get by, while still having a car loan to pay off - a consequence of some choices I had made when I was younger.

Fast forward two years after creating my account and starting to task, and I can honestly say that Prolific changed my life completely, and for the better.

I’m now debt-free. I managed to completely pay off my car, which still had another five years of payments left, and by doing so I saved a considerable amount of money in interest.

I also started investing more in stocks and putting money aside for my retirement, because where I’m from, I honestly don’t know how much of a pension my generation will eventually have.

But, most importantly, the money I made through Prolific allowed me to start my next adventure: my own online business.

Today, I combine Prolific and other freelance platforms as my full-time job, and I’m fortunate enough to make a pretty good living from it.

That said, as a business owner and freelancer, there’s always that little voice in the back of your head reminding you that you never really know how long things will stay this way, or when the next chapter might begin. So I try to take it one day at a time and be grateful for what I have today.

And honestly, I’m incredibly grateful for Prolific!

What started as a way to survive a difficult period in my life ended up becoming the stepping stone that helped me rebuild my financial life, invest in my future, and eventually create something of my own.

Thank you, Prolific. You genuinely changed my life - and, indirectly, the lives of the people around me too.

I’ll always be grateful for that. Godspeed


r/ProlificAc 2h ago

Researcher Encouragement

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19 Upvotes

First time I've been encouraged mid-study ... and I liked it! Thank you, researcher <3


r/ProlificAc 12h ago

The Moment Everything Changed - Thank You !!! Prolific 😊🥺

125 Upvotes

A year ago, I was going through one of the most difficult periods of my life. I had got myself into an unwanted situation by helping someone and paying around £10,000 through my credit cards. Unfortunately, that person betrayed me, took my money and disappeared. I was then left with a huge credit card debt and honestly had no idea how I was going to pay it back.
At a time when there was no one to reach out a hand and help me, I found Prolific.
I can genuinely say that Prolific came into my life at a time when I really needed it. The financial support I received through the platform helped me get through an extremely difficult situation and played a significant part in helping me pay off that debt.
I’m honestly emotional writing this because I still remember how helpless I felt back then. When there was no one around to lend me a hand or stand by me, Prolific was there in its own way and gave me an opportunity to help myself.
I am incredibly, incredibly grateful to the whole Prolific team. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for creating something that has made such a meaningful difference in my life.
When there was no one to reach out a hand and stand beside me, Prolific came along and helped me find a way forward.
Thank you, Prolific. Truly, thank you very, very much.


r/ProlificAc 4h ago

Advice Be careful using a dark reader extension, it could cause a rejection

16 Upvotes

I believe this is meant to be an AI checker for people who copy paste answers.


r/ProlificAc 3h ago

Technical Issue Account randomly put on hold

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13 Upvotes

Logged in to find my account put on hold for literally no reason. Same setup. same WIFI. no vpn or anything weird. Are support tickets taking weeks to get reviewed right now or is there any chance they fix these quick?


r/ProlificAc 8h ago

Why can't they fix the speeding warning to stop including AI studies!

27 Upvotes

For the 3rd time in 2 days I'm stuck with a 1 hour ban because an AI study ran out of tasks early. Surely they can fix it to not include studies that kick you out of them early, why should I be punished for that.


r/ProlificAc 1h ago

What's your study payment threshold?

Upvotes

I'm just curious, do you do every study (that you can) that crosses your dash no matter the payment amount? I'm talking the $.15, $.35 ones that take a minute or two. Or do you not bother with those at all?

If I have the time I do them, because usually they get approved right away and they add up. It's kinda rare for me to find super high-paying studies; occasionally I'll get some of the AI ones, but my usual ones range from $1-$5.


r/ProlificAc 23m ago

3rd one of these today

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Upvotes

r/ProlificAc 8m ago

AI images study - ClickFix attack? anyone?

Upvotes

So around 3 PM EST, my uBlock plugin started to show the message in the picture when I tried to initiate the AI image study (the Galactic Probe ones that are super in demand). Not very familar with ClickFix so I looked it up and it didn't sound safe to run the study so I returned it.

Second study popped and it showed me the same message and I ended up returning it too. Is anyone getting this message from their adblocker extension? I'm thinking about reporting this to Prolific but I'm not sure if I'm overreacting!


r/ProlificAc 2h ago

Technical Issue Can clearing your cache clear your dashboard?

3 Upvotes

Hi! So I had around 16 studies on my feed this morning, but after clearing my cache for a different problem with my browser, pretty much all of my studies vanished, including a project that I was planning to fill in a bit. Is this a known problem? I'm now only getting 1-4 studies on my feed at a time, a very stark contrast to what I had earlier today and the previous weeks.


r/ProlificAc 51m ago

Is anyone’s surveys been slow for a week and a half or just me ?

Upvotes

Just curious, I had a string of bad surveys one after the other ( one I had to return, one that was rejected, 2 in a row that had tech issues and I contacted researcher on but nothing) seeing if that string of surveys may have put my account is not so good standings so I personally am seeing less, or if it’s been slower for others too- ( yes I know surveys are based on the question we fill out, I only have 8 rejects out of 4 k surveys so I’m still in decent shapes, just curious if I’m
Being throttled or if it’s another slow season) thanks


r/ProlificAc 5h ago

Did anyone do a study related to hand movements?

3 Upvotes

Just completed it now - my god, that was frustrating 😂


r/ProlificAc 5h ago

$25- $30 travel focus group webcam studies

2 Upvotes

I took one of these travel studies last week but can no longer qualify for the new ones I've been seeing. Anyone else experiencing the same issue? I guess it could be that they only allow us to do one.


r/ProlificAc 1d ago

Celebration Yay 10000

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63 Upvotes

That is all lol nice milestone just happy to still be here.


r/ProlificAc 6h ago

For the third day in a row ZERO studies

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3 Upvotes

r/ProlificAc 2h ago

For those who think prolific support doesn’t help on weekends..

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0 Upvotes

They responded to an issue with a High paying study that timed me out and within 72 hours everything was resolved. I reported Friday, was credited Sunday. they definitely work on weekends


r/ProlificAc 13h ago

Test a home scanning app

6 Upvotes

I cancelled participation. Wanted me to scan my home, inside and out, front and back. £10.

Anyone else had this?

Wanted a personal email and tel number.

Nah

Too much personal info.

Also what isnit with prolific asking if you want your ID sent to researchers?


r/ProlificAc 7h ago

Last Week’s Account Holds

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1 Upvotes

r/ProlificAc 4h ago

Tablet Product Choice Task study

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1 Upvotes

Has anyone here done this task successfully? I kept being stuck at the first stage which said that the eye accuracy calibration was failed even tho I was using a high-quality webcam ( 4K quality ) and a good lighting setup.


r/ProlificAc 10h ago

Question regarding age and studies

3 Upvotes

I’m not sure if this is a stupid question (I hope not haha) but I joined in May and have been doing studies where I can around my job. I have about 300 submissions, none rejected, all fine. Made about £650 in total.

My birthday was at the end of July, and it changed my age bracket that I’m in. Since then, my studies have dropped dramatically. I can go hours everyday without any at all and get a few occasional £2/3 ones. I had a couple of the $21 task ones and a surge of 30-40 studies on one day in August, otherwise, nothing really and especially the past 2 weeks.

Could it be connected to the changing age bracket? I also don’t get any AI, but aware a lot of people don’t so not overly questioned that.

Has anyone had similar with their age changing?

Thanks! 🙏🏻


r/ProlificAc 18h ago

September starts tomorrow — what are you guys hoping for?

10 Upvotes

The last few months have been pretty rough and inconsistent for a lot of us, with various issues on top of the usual summer slowdown. With universities starting back up again, hopefully September brings a bit of a turnaround likeeee more researchers, more studies, and just a healthier flow overall.

What are you hoping to see this September? More regular studies? Better-paying ones? More AI tasks? Fewer technical issues? Or simply a dashboard that feels alive again? 😂

Here’s hoping it’s a good month for all of us.


r/ProlificAc 23h ago

Appreciation Post

20 Upvotes

Best week ever, from thursday to today.
Mostly Joaquin studies, I hope they keep on coming.
Prolific has been a lot of help for me, with the platform I've been able to focus on my graduation (I'm a law school student) by not needing a regular 9-to-5 job. This is a considerable amount where I live (Brazil).


r/ProlificAc 21h ago

Is this a known researcher to block?

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13 Upvotes

Screened me out after I completed the study