Introduction

In short: Using Prolific allows you to make sure you get many participants. And the participants get their study credits for participating. Learn here how to use it with PsyToolkit.

Prolific is a company that helps researchers with finding participants. It is similar to MTurk in functionality (see PsyToolkit lesson about MTurk).

It is super easy to use Prolific with PsyToolkit.

Step 1

In PsyToolkit: Setup your survey in PsyToolkit as usual and get your PsyToolkit study URL. Use "Copy link to clipboard" or copy-and-paste the web link.

INFO: For the sake of demonstration, imagine the PsyToolkit web URL is:

https://www.psytoolkit.org/c/3.3.0/survey?s=TOpGKxyz

This is just an example link that in reality does not actually go anywhere.

Step 2

In Profilic: Make sure you have a Prolific researcher account. Login to that.

Set up a "New study" from the Prolific website menu on the left of the Prolific website.

You can fill in the title and details of your study under "STUDY DETAILS", but for PsyToolkit now directly go to Step 3 below.

Step 3

In Profilic: Look for "STUDY LINK". There is a line "What is the URL of your study".

DO NOT YET ENTER YOUR PsyToolkit URL.

But instead, you first select the option (where green arrows point to): "I’ll use URL parameters". You should then see this:

prolific1

Step 4

Note that in the image above, you see the first link of that character is a ?. Now, you need to replace the first ? in that line with an & as explained in the image below (with a zoom in to an enlarged view).

prolific2
This is a really important. If you keep an ?, you can always change it. The think with web link is that the when parameters are given to a web link, you have a ? first and the rest are & to separate different parameters and their values. You do not need to further understand this.

Step 5

Now remember that you copied PsyToolkit link in Step 1. Now paste that before the & sign in the box. Then it should look like below:

prolific3

Step 6

In prolific: Now scroll down and get select the I’ll redirect them using a URL. Click the copy button or copy the link manually and go back to your PsyToolkit survey page.

prolific4
The full code is blacked out here.

Step 7

In PsyToolkit: Now paste the link you got from Prolific and paste it in PsyToolkit where it says URL at end of survey, as shown below.

prolific5

Step 8

In PsyToolkit: In your PsyToolkit settings (can be set in the menu on the left), make sure you have selected Show advanced options (for experienced users)

In your survey, you see two lines called "In:" and "Out:". (Under "If you want to get information from calling …​")

On the In: line, enter the following three words, in capitals and separated by spaces as follows: PROLIFIC_PID STUDY_ID and SESSION_ID On the Out: line, enter the following three words, in capitals and separated by spaces as follows: PROLIFIC_PID STUDY_ID and SESSION_ID

It will look like this:

prolific6
In your instructions, tell your participants that they really should click the link in order to get their payment.

Step 9

In PsyToolkit: Save your survey information and compile (again).

Step 10

In Prolific: Finish off as follows: Save as draft and then Preview. You can now check if it works. You should be able to do your PsyToolkit survey and check if it completes correctly.

In PsyToolkit, there is an option to compile surveys for testing called "Survey test mode". This makes it possible to quickly run through long surveys. Once you are sure it all works, make sure you compile another time without that option.

If it works correctly, you will see that as shown below.

prolific7