Bonus payments are additional payments you can make beyond the normal payment for a participant's submission. You can use them to allow for variable rewards, prizes, or to make partial payments to participants who have not completed your study but you still want to reward.

Sometimes researchers use them for subsequent parts of a longitudinal / muti-part study, where the format of the study is such that those subsequent parts cannot be run in the usual way via a study page on your researcher account. This must be explained clearly to participants in the first study in the series. Bonus payments may be also be used to reward a participant for completing all parts of a conventional longitudinal study, and this can be stated upfront in the study description as an incentive.

Please note:

  • The participant must have participated in a study of yours in order for you to make the payment; it may be a completed study (from any time) or one that's still active.
  • You can award bonus payments at any time after a submission is complete.
  • Bonus payments are charged at the same platform fee rate (+ VAT if applicable) as standard participant rewards.
  • Bonus payments can be paid to all submission statuses.

How do I make bonus payments?

There are three methods of making bonus payments on Prolific:

Manual payment

1. You can manually award submissions in your list with a bonus payment by selecting the check box to the left of the participant's ID and then clicking 'Bonus payment' at the top of the list:

All selected participants will be paid the bonus, even if they have already been paid a bonus previously. Please ensure that the only participants selected are those whom you wish to pay this bonus payment to.

2. You can then enter the desired bonus amount into the box and select 'Review bonuses':

3. Then confirm the payment details and select 'Pay bonuses'

The cost displayed in the total cost for these bonus payments, and does not include the cost of any previous bonus payments made. Please check that the number of participants selected and total cost are as expected.

Bulk bonus payment

1. Export your study data from Prolific (find out how to do this here) and identify the participants you wish to reward.

2. Create a list with these participant IDs and the amount you wish to pay (this amount can vary per participant). Importantly, the format of this list needs to be '<participant ID>,<amount>' on each line (see below)

3. While viewing submissions for your study select the 'More' dropdown menu and go to the 'Bulk bonus payment' option:

4. Insert your list of participant IDs and the amount you wish to pay:

5. Click 'Pay Bonuses'. Please note, this may take a moment to update. Do not attempt to pay the bonus payment a second time unless you receive a message to say the payments have failed.

Bonus payment all

You can also give a bonus payment all submissions by clicking the 'Bonus payment all' button at the top of the submissions list. Please note that this will award bonus payments to all participants, regardless of their submission status.

Record of bonus payments

Your study summary will be automatically updated to reflect the bonus payments you have made. You can obtain the Basic and Detailed study summaries here:

Please note

  • Bonus payments are factored into the 'Reward' column of the study summary for each participant. There will not be a separate column to reflect bonus payments.
  • It can take some time for your study summary to update with the bonus payments you have made. If the summary hasn't updated to include your recent bonus payment, please try again later, or try logging out and back in again.

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