Submissions on Prolific and submissions in your external survey tool are managed separately.
Prolific submissions: Unique per participant when single submission is enabled
External survey submissions: Not controlled by Prolific
Participants may be able to access your external survey link more than once after opening it.
Prevent duplicate responses
To reduce duplicate responses in your survey tool, enable a setting such as Prevent multiple submissions (or similar) in your survey software.
If you see duplicate responses
If the same participant appears more than once in your external survey data, and multiple submissions are not enabled on Prolific:
Match responses using the participant’s Prolific ID
Remove duplicate entries from your dataset
FAQs
Does the submission setting affect auto-approval?
Yes:
Multiple submissions: Submissions completed in less than half the estimated time won’t be auto-approved and must be reviewed manually
Single submission: Standard auto-approval rules apply
Can I prevent participants from reopening my survey link?
No. Prolific does not control access to external survey links.
Most survey tools provide a Prevent multiple submissions setting - check your survey software options.
Why don’t I see the single submission option?
For quota and representative samples, single submission is applied automatically and isn’t shown in the study setup page.