Where are Prolific's participants from?

Prolific is available for participants from most OECD countries, with the exceptions of Turkey, Lithuania, Colombia and Costa Rica where Prolific is not available.

In addition, Prolific is also available to participants in Croatia and South Africa.

Participants who are not from our supported countries can still participate if they live in a supported country.


How old are Prolific's participants?

All participants on Prolific are at least 18 years old.

It’s not permitted on Prolific to run studies with children as the participants, even if the parent consents. You’re welcome to run studies with parents as your target demographic, but their children can’t be involved in the study.


Inviting participants to Prolific

Our 'bring your own participants' feature is available for some researchers. This allows you to invite participants onto Prolific to take part your studies. You can find out more about this here: Bring your own participants.


How do participants hear about Prolific?

Participants are primarily recruited to Prolific via word of mouth, including word of mouth via social media. Participants can also be invited to join Prolific by researchers, as mentioned in the section above.

When Prolific was founded in 2014, our participants were recruited via three channels:

  1. Social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and various other online forums).
  2. Flyer distribution on university campuses.
  3. The Prolific referral scheme (ceased March 2019). This allowed participants to invite their social network to join Prolific, in return for small cash incentives for the referrer.

To explore our active participant pool take a look at our audience checker tool!


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