1. Prolific
  2. 🌟 Getting started

🌟 Getting started

An introduction to the Prolific platform.

An introduction to Prolific

  • Quick guide to using Prolific

    Below, we have put together a quick guide to get you started on Prolific. This includes a list of must read articles, and also clarifications around what you should and should not do as a researcher on Prolific's platform.  Must Reads About Prol...

  • What is Prolific?

    Prolific empowers great research. We enable fast, reliable and high quality data collection by connecting diverse people around the world. Our mission is to make trustworthy data more accessible in order to help improve human knowledge and decisio...

  • Who can post studies on Prolific?

    Prolific is used primarily by academics, but also by companies, startups, developers of products, market researchers, pollsters and anyone interested in finding out what people really think. Go ahead and sign up for a researcher account to try it ...

  • Are there types of studies that aren't suitable for Prolific?

    In most cases we are unable to support studies that require collection of personally identifiable information. You can read more about this here: Can I ask participants for their personal information / identifiers? Please be aware that we may get ...

Referrals

  • Researcher referrals

    Sharing your referral URL with your friends and colleagues is a great way to help them with their research by giving them free credit to use on Prolific studies! How do I refer? You can find your referral URL here. It will be visible only after y...

  • Referral FAQs

    My referral bonus hasn't been applied If you have topped up the minimum amount of £80 / $100 and your referral bonus has not been applied to your balance, please get in touch with our Support Team using the button at the bottom of this page. How l...

Managing my account

  • I'm having trouble logging in

    There are a few reasons why you might be unable to log in. This article has password reset instructions and some troubleshooting solutions to help you get back into your account. Password reset The first thing to do is try a password reset. Use t...

  • Why is my account on hold?

    If you log in to Prolific and see that your account has been placed on hold, this means that some actions on your account have been temporarily restricted. This will usually occur when a study running on your account appears to go against our te...

Practices, security and privacy

  • Can I ask participants for their personal information / identifiers?

    We take privacy and the maintenance of participant anonymity seriously at Prolific. We require that our researchers do not attempt to identify participants. This means that you should not ask them for any personal data which would make them direct...

  • Participants' personal data

    Personal data you may receive When running studies, you may receive participants' personal data in several ways: When a participant signs up for a study, you will be able to access certain basic demographic information from Prolific relating to ...

  • Data protection and privacy

    Prolific's privacy notice and cookies policy Prolific's privacy notice and cookies policy document can be found and downloaded from here📎 Prolific empowers great research. 🚀 We enable fast, reliable, and high quality data collection by connectin...

Prolific FAQs

  • How is Prolific different from MTurk & Co?

    For a more detailed, side-by-side breakdown of how Prolific compares to MTurk, check out our Prolific vs MTurk comparison page. In a nutshell, this is how Prolific is different from MTurk and other crowdsourcing platforms: Flexible prescreening Y...

  • Is online crowdsourcing a legitimate alternative to lab-based research?

    Here are some helpful papers making the case for online crowdsourcing: This paper shows that online crowdsourcing can be legitimately used for collecting data and that it allows to collect high quality data inexpensively and rapidly. Here's a pap...

  • How do I cite Prolific?

    If you used Prolific as a part of your research, you can cite us! We have included some guidelines on how to cite us in your research publications below. General citation guidelines Company Name: Prolific First release: 2014 Copyright Year (curr...

  • Looking for the Participant Help Centre?

    Hello! Are you looking for our Participant Help Centre? Feel free to pop over there using this link: Participant Help Centre. You should be able to find the answer to your question over there. If not, you can always get in touch with our friendly ...