⚠️ As of February 10th, 2025, our custom screening is only available to users who have previously accessed the feature. This feature will no longer be available to users who haven't accessed it before this date.
We're sorry for any inconvenience this may cause and are actively reviewing plans to re-launch an improved version in the future. In the meantime, you can use our two-study screening approach to recruit your sample.
Contents:
This article will explain how to recruit the exact participants you need for your study using Prolific’s custom screening feature.
1. What is custom screening?
2. Recommended format
3. Cost
4. Setting up your survey using the custom screening feature
5. Video tutorial
6. Managing submissions
7. Two-study screening approach
What is custom screening?
Custom screening lets you check for participant characteristics that aren't available in our built-in prescreening options.
While our free built-in prescreeners cover common criteria (like being right-handed), you might need participants with very specific traits that we don't screen for. For instance, if you need participants who have an uncle named Jim, you'd use custom screening to identify this unique demographic.
It’s important to note that custom screening can’t be used alongside our representative samples.
If custom screening isn’t what you’re looking for, you also may find our articles on ‘built-in prescreening’ and ‘validating prescreening’ helpful.
Recommended formatting
When it comes to recruiting a custom sample, we recommend keeping your screening questions vague so that participants are not influenced to answer a certain way. We recommend setting up your study to only allow one response per participant to ensure your participant pool is accurate. Make sure to configure your external software to do the same.
One method is to ask a variety of questions so that the participants don't know which one you're actually measuring. You could, for example, ask the following questions with 'yes/no' answer options:
- "I do open water swimming at least twice a month"
- "I own an Air BnB"
- "I use an electric toothbrush"
- "I use an Uber at least twice a week"
- "I own a poodle"
- "I have 3 children"
Your custom screening questions should be set as mandatory/required responses (if your external survey software offers this feature) and should appear at the very beginning of the study. This ensures participants who don't meet your criteria are screened out immediately.
Finally, we also encourage keeping the title of your study ambiguous to prevent participants from being influenced in their answers.
This formatting approach is recommended for all screening methods described below.
Cost
You must reward screened out participants for their time. The minimum payment is £0.10/$0.14 following Prolific's payment principles, though you should adjust this based on the length and complexity of your screening questions.
The reward for screened-out participants is not included in the cost of your study. Like bonus payments, these rewards, along with the associated platform fee and VAT (if applicable), are processed on the submission page and drawn from your workspace wallet. When you publish your study, you'll pay the total study cost upfront. Screened-out participants will be paid from your remaining wallet balance, so ensure you maintain sufficient funds beyond your study's total cost.
Setting up your survey using the custom screening feature
Step 1: Create your screening survey
First, head over to your preferred external survey software and create something new. If you need some help, our integration guides have specific instructions for the most common survey software.
Next, add your prescreening questions at the beginning of your study (scroll up to see our recommended formatting) - remember to keep them vague so that participants aren’t influenced to answer a certain way.
Next, you'll want to set up your survey to take different paths:
- If someone answers "Yes" they'll continue to your main survey
- If it's a "No" they'll be directed to your end of survey message
Again, check out our integration guides for how to set up these paths, including how to create your end of survey message in your software.
Step 2: Move over to Prolific
- Under Data Collection type, select ‘External Study Link’
- Once you’ve filled in all the relevant study details head to the ‘Data collection’ section.
- Pop in your survey link, then scroll down to ‘Custom screening’ and enable it by clicking ‘Yes’. Custom screening won't be available until you've completed these two steps.
Step 3: Creating your completion codes
Under ‘Completion paths’ you’ll see ‘Default’ and ‘Screened out’:
- ‘Default’ is the code for participants who’ve passed your prescreening question(s). For example, If someone answers "Yes" they'll continue to your main survey. Add this code to the corresponding part of your external survey as previously explained above.
- ‘Screened out’ is for the participants who don’t meet your criteria. For example, If they click "No" they'll be directed to your end of survey message. Add this code to the part of your external survey that includes this message, as explained above. Your participants will then need to come back to Prolific to complete their submission.
You can find further assistance with the rest of your study set-up here: Setting up a study on Prolific (step-by-step guide)
Video tutorial
Managing submissions
With your two completion codes applied to your study, you will see completed submissions coming through for participants that are either ‘COMPLETED’, ‘SCREENED OUT’, or ‘NOCODE’
For participants with the SCREENED OUT completion code, select the participant by ticking the box next to their submission, and use the new ‘Screen out selected’ button at the bottom of the screen.
This enables you to reward participants for their time taken to complete the screening questions, but not the full reward for the study. A reminder here, that this will come from your remaining balance in your wallet and not from the studies upfront cost. Enter the reward amount relative to their time to complete, making sure it meets the minimum of £6/$8 per hour. For example, 1 minute = £0.10/$0.14.
If participants take longer than expected to screen out, the system might calculate an unrealistic payment. You can contact us to determine the appropriate compensation in these cases.
Screened out participants are considered complete submissions, and their places will not be reopened automatically for new participants. If you have screened out participants and need more submissions, you can use the existing increase places feature on your active study.
Two-study screening approach
If you’re unable to obtain the specific population you require using our existing prescreening filters, you can also run two separate studies on Prolific to recruit your sample.
It’s important to note, while this is the original screening method and some researchers still prefer it for its simplicity, we're moving towards using the new product-based custom screening feature mentioned above. However, this two-study approach remains a viable alternative when needed.
When budgeting for the two-study approach, it's important to consider that you'll need to account for both the screening study payments (minimum £0.10/$0.14 per participant) and the full reward for those who qualify for and complete the main study. To help with planning: let’s say you're aiming to find 100 eligible participants, you may need to screen a larger pool of participants first to reach your target sample size.
Step 1: Create Initial Screening Study
- Set up a simple screening survey. If **you’re located in the UK, EEA, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, Argentina, South Korea, or the USA, we recommend using our in-built Survey builder otherwise checkout out our integration guides for an alternative external survey software. It’s also important to note our Survey builder is not suitable for sensitive questions.
- First, add your screening question following the recommended formatting above (e.g., "I have an uncle named Jim")
- Then, include basic response options (e.g., Yes/No)
- Next, you’ll set your sample size (e.g., 20 participants)
Step 2: Collect and Review Responses
- Publish your screening study
- Once the correct number of participants have completed the survey, review the responses to identify eligible participants
- If you used external survey software, your data will be stored there
- If you used Prolific's Survey Builder, your data will be stored on Prolific
- Once the correct number of participants have completed the survey, review the responses to identify eligible participants
Step 3: Set Up Main Study
- Create a new study that contains your main research content, including all your survey questions, tasks, or other research materials. This will be the full version of your study that qualified participants will complete after passing the screening criteria
- Add the ‘Custom Allowlist’ screener or participant group
- Paste in the Prolific IDs of eligible participants from the screening study
There is no reason to apply a blocklist when publishing your main study as it will only be visible to the participants you've specifically allowed through the ‘Custom Allowlist’.
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