Survey builder

With our survey builder feature, you can create your own prescreener or publish a short survey directly on Prolific. Read on to find out more!

The survey builder feature is currently in beta release and available to researchers in the UK, EEA, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, Argentina, South Korea and USA due to data compliance. We are working hard to bring this feature to everyone using Prolific.

What is the survey builder?

The survey builder feature allows you to run a 1-5 question study completely within Prolific. Some examples of when you might want to do this are:

• To conduct a quick poll
• To recruit a custom sample
• To ask participants a follow-up question to a previous study

Using the survey builder for custom prescreening

If you need to recruit a custom sample, you can use the survey builder feature to create your initial screening survey. Then use a custom allowlist to invite back participants. Read more about the two-step approach to recruit a custom sample.

How to use the survey builder feature

You can access and use the study builder feature via the normal ‘new study’ form. Under the ‘Data collection’ section, you’ll see an option to select survey builder.

When you use the survey builder feature, you’ll need to:

• Add 1-5 questions with a single or multi-select response. Find out more about best practices when asking questions here.
• Add a privacy notice for your study. You can paste your privacy notice directly or host your privacy notice elsewhere and link it.
• Agree to the specific terms and conditions for survey builder.
• Pay our minimum hourly rate. The minimum reward is £0.10/$0.14 for <1 minute study.

All submissions are automatically approved when using the survey builder feature. No completion code is provided.

You’ll need to make sure you don’t ask for any sensitive or personal data. Specifically:

• You must not collect personally identifying information. This includes name, date of birth, email address, phone number, full postcode, social media or gamer IDs.
• You must not ask sensitive questions. These include racial or ethnic origins; political opinions; religious or philosophical beliefs; trade union memberships; health and medical records; and sex life and sexual orientation.

To run a study using the survey builder, simply complete all other sections in the 'new study' form. Find more guidance on setting up a study on Prolific. Please note, that these submissions won't have a completion code.

When you’ve published your study, it is then distributed to participants directly on Prolific. You can review the data collected on your study submissions page and download it in a CSV format.

You can view submissions by clicking on the ‘Submissions’ button. All submissions are automatically approved when using the survey builder tool. Responses will only be visible to the publisher, not collaborators in the workspace.

If you need to delete any participant’s survey data, please contact our Support Team using the button below. Please include the study name and participant ID.

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