GuidedTrack How to pay participants different amounts depending on whether they participate in the screening survey only or the full survey (1) GuidedTrack Docs

How to pay participants different amounts depending on whether they participate in the screening survey only, or the full survey🔗

You have a couple of choices available when it comes to paying participants for their participation in screening or multi-part surveys. You could:

  • Direct participants to a separate follow-up study, with its own payment link at the end, OR...
  • If running the study on MTurk (or on MTurk via Positly), you could pay participants a bonus for completing the full survey. This may not be as practical or scalable as the first option, though. Also, note that bonuses are not currently available on Cint.

As part of a set of questions which are not specifically labelled as screening questions, you may include a question that will determine whether the participant should be included:

*question: Do you do night shift work?
	Yes
		>> nightShift = 1
	No

Later, at the end of the screening questions, you can then tell participants if they qualify for the next study.

*if: nightShift = 1
	Congratulations, you may qualify for a follow-up study.

	This follow-up study [...put details of the study here so the participant understands what they would be opting into...]

	This follow-up study would take about X minutes to complete and will pay you $Y, which will be paid using bonuses upon your completion of the study.

	*question: Would you be interested in taking part in our follow-up survey?
		Yes
			*set: isInterestedInFollowup
		No
			Okay. Thank you again for your participation today!

	*if: isInterestedInFollowup
		*question: Would you be willing to provide your email address so that we can send you information about the follow-up study? It will not be used for any other purposes besides communicating with you about this study.
			Yes
				*set: isWillingToShareEmail
			No
				Okay. Thank you again for your participation today!

		*if: isWillingToShareEmail
			*question: What is your email address?
				*save: email
				*throwaway

			*email
				*to: {email}
				*when: calendar::now + 3.seconds
				*subject: Follow-up study
				*body
					Here is the link to finish up and get paid for the survey you just completed: {link here}
					And here is a link to the follow-up survey: {link here}

			>> email = ""

			Thank you! We have emailed you a link for the follow-up study. Please do not open that link until you have completed your submission for *this survey* you are currently working on.

In the example above, notice how we used *throwaway and >> email = "" to prevent participants' email addresses from being stored in the CSV file. If there is only one follow-up survey, or if you are using email scheduling in your program, then the email address can be overwritten immediately after it is used to send and/or schedule the email(s).

Participant Management Example 2: directing eligible consenting participants to a follow-up survey without requiring their email address🔗

As in the previous example, as part of a set of questions which are not specifically labelled as screening questions, you may include a question that will determine whether the participant should be included:

*question: Do you do night shift work?
	Yes
		>> nightShift = 1
	No

Then, later in the same program, you can invite eligible participants to progress to the next study:

*if: nightShift = 1
	Congratulations, you may qualify for a follow-up study.

	This follow-up study [...put details of the study here so the participant understands what they would be opting into...]

	This follow-up study would take about X minutes to complete and will pay you $Y, which will be paid using bonuses upon your completion of the study.

	*question: Would you be interested in taking part in our follow-up survey?
		Yes
			Thank you! Please open the following link in a *separate tab,* but do not move to that tab until you have gone to the following link to finish your submission for *this survey.*

			Here is the link to finish up and get paid: {link here}

			Here is the link to the follow-up survey to open in a separate tab: {link here}

		No
			Okay. Thank you again for your participation today!

Here is the link to finish up and get paid for the survey you just completed: {link here}

Below is an example of what not to do for the participants who are eligible to progress to the next study. In this example, the program that participants are directed to does not include its own consent form, which raises several issues (discussed below).

*if: nightShift = 1
	*program: Full study program which lacks its own consent form

There are multiple problems with this example:

  • The participant isn't being given a separate consent process for the follow-up study.
  • It isn't being made clear to the participant that there are different payment rates based on participating in that longer study. The additional payment will also have to come via a bonus system, which isn't available if Cint (as opposed to MTurk) is being used.
  • Another problem with allowing some people to complete the whole study in one sitting is that the total completion time would be different for those people compared to the rest of the participants (who do not progress to the whole study). This would cause the expected completion time that you record in Positly to be inaccurate.
    • In the worst case scenario, participants who complete the whole study will exceed the maximum allowed completion time (if you underestimated how long it would take, or if you based your estimate on the completion time for those who don't qualify for the full survey). If this happens, participants may have their survey incorrectly marked as "abandoned" by MTurk. This should be avoided as much as possible, because having an assignment marked as "abandoned" can cause unnecessary frustration and/or distress for participants (until the mistake has been resolved).

Instead of including the full study program as a subprogram within the screening program, another option could have been to request the participant's email address and then to send them a customized URL to a separate full study program. In any case, instead of sending the participant straight to the full study, the survey should have directed them to an invitation for a consent form explaining what will happen and how much they will be paid.

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