📙 Prolific's Best Practice Guide

Phase 1: Questions to ask before creating a study

• What research question do I want to answer? And why?
• Am I doing exploratory or confirmatory research? Why does it matter?
• What is my target population?
• What type of data do I need? Quantitative or Qualitative?
• How large should my sample be?
• Preregistering your research

Phase 2: Things to keep in mind when designing a study

• How to phrase questions and items
• Special focus: Sensitive questions
• The order of your questions
• Tips for the visual design of your survey
• Failed attention checks
• Biases in research

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Phase 3: Piloting and launching your study

• “What’s that noise?” — Of systematic and random errors, or: Why pilot testing is important
• Approving Submissions and Rejecting Participants

Phase 4: Analysing your data

• Two common statistical frameworks: Null Hypothesis Significance Testing and Bayesian Statistics
• Pro-Tip: Point and Range Estimations – or: How to make your theory more interesting and useful

Phase 5: Iterating the research cycle

• Aim for converging evidence & theory building

Phase ∞: Metascience & the empirical cycle

• Researcher degrees of freedom
• A manifesto for reproducible science (by Munafò et al., 2017)

Statistical and Methodological Concepts

• What kind of sampling methods are there?
• What are the advantages and limitations of an online sample?
• Statistical Power