Why and how to run multiple separate studies🔗

Participants should generally be paid for responding to surveys, including screening surveys, even if their responses indicate they don't qualify for the subsequent study. This usually creates a situation where you'll want to pay participants for the screening survey separately (since not everyone progresses to the next stage). Typically, this will mean that you "request" the screening survey (if you're using Positly, MTurk, or similar platform) as a standalone survey. Therefore, you'll need to use a separate survey for any subsequent/follow-up surveys.

Note: If the participant qualifies to complete the follow-up study, we recommend a second consent process for the follow-up study. This is essential if the risks of the follow-up study are different to the risks of the screening survey.

Another thing to keep in mind is that each separate program will have a separate dataset CSV file that is generated, and you'll need to use something (such as a unique participant identifier) to keep track of participants across different surveys. See the section on query string parameters for how to do this.

If a participant agrees to a follow-up/full survey and has already consented, you could then consider the following options for administering the full survey:

  • Provide them a link which they can open in a separate tab, and ask them to complete the submission of the screening study (including progression to the payment page, for paid surveys) before doing the follow-up study, OR...
  • Assign eligible participants a custom attribute in Positly, then use that custom attribute as a filter for the follow-up survey, OR...
  • Seek consent to email them a link, then email it to them. Ask them to complete the submission of the screening study (including progression to the payment page, for paid surveys) before doing the follow-up study. If you're going with the email option, you could either:
    • Email them the follow-up survey URL immediately after they provide their address, OR...
    • Email them the follow-up survey URL at a predetermined time in the future. If you do this, make sure to tell participants the expected timeframe during which they'll be invited to complete the follow-up survey(s), prior to them consenting to the follow-up, OR...
  • If you are using MTurk directly, or using MTurk via Positly, you could include the full survey in the same GT survey as the screening survey, but pay a bonus to each participant who progressed to the full survey in the same session. However, note that this option might not be as practical or scalable as the other options.
    • To pay a participant a bonus on Positly, you can go to the Participants tab within the relevant Run of your study. To give identical bonuses to multiple participants at once, click on the "Give Bonuses" button and paste in the relevant participant IDs. To give a bonus to a specific participant, you can either paste their participant ID after clicking "Give Bonuses," or you can locate their row in the Participants tab, and select the menu button for that row to give a bonus that way. Please see here for further information. Unfortunately giving bonuses is not possible on Cint.

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