What are they?
- Bonus payments are additional payments you can make beyond the normal payment for a participant's submission.
- You can use them to allow for variable rewards, prizes, or to make partial payments to participant who have not completed your study but you still want to reward.
- Sometimes researchers use them for subsequent parts of a longitudinal / muti-part study, where the format is such that those subsequent parts cannot be run in the usual way via a study page on your researcher account. This must be explained clearly to participants.
- The participant must have participated in a study of yours in order for you to make the payment; it may be a completed study (from any time) or one that's still active.
- They may be also be used to reward a participant for completing all parts of a longitudinal study, and this can be stated upfront in the study description as an incentive.
- You can award bonus payments at any time after a submission is complete.
- Commission is still charged on this type of participant payment.
How do I make bonus payments?
On study submissions page:
- Use the tick box on the left hand side against the participant IDs to select those you wish to pay.
- Then select the 'Pay Bonuses' button at the top of the submissions list.
- The following box will appear, so you can enter the amount you wish to pay.
Via your study export:
- Export your study data from Prolific (find out how to do this here) and identify the participants you wish to reward.
- Create a list with these participant ID's and the amount you wish to pay (this amount can vary per participant).
- While Viewing submissions for your study select the "More" dropdown menu and go to the "Bulk bonus payment" option.
- Insert your list of participant ID's and the amount you wish to pay.
- Click 'Pay Bonuses'
- Please note, this may take a moment to update. Do not attempt to pay the bonus payment a second time unless you receive a message to say the payments have failed.
Note: bonus payments are charged at the same commission rate (+ VAT if applicable) as standard participant rewards.
Performance based rewards
- You can pay participants variable rates on Prolific.
- However, even if the rates are variable the minimum must agree with our reward per hour guidelines of > £5/hr.
- Bonus payments can then be paid in addition to the base reward based on performance.
Record of Bonus Payments
- Your study summary will be updated to reflect the bonus payments you have made. You can obtain the Basic and Detailed study summaries here:
- It can take some time for your study summary to update with the bonus payments you have made.
- If the summary hasn't updated to include your recent bonus payment, please try again later, or try logging out and back in again.