Update 3 - Our Winners!

We're thrilled to announce the winners of Prolific's first ever £10K Research Grant Competition!

After an extensive review process by our internal panel, our first place winner is (drumroll!! 🥁):

Die young, live fast? Does the feeling that you’ll die young, no matter what you do, encourage unhealthy behaviour and worsen health inequalities?

This proposal was submitted by Dr Gillian Pepper and Richard Brown representing Northumbria University. They will be awarded £4,700 to carry out their study.

Because our winners didn't apply for the full grant amount, we had money to spare! So we've awarded £5,300 to our runners-up to conduct their study:

Feel & Think: Exploring different sensory modalities and memory as frontlines against infectious disease

This proposal was submitted by researchers from the William James Center for Research, University of Aveiro, and Purdue University.

Thank You!

We received +100 grant proposals and +2K votes. Thank you so much to everyone who participated!

We were absolutely blown away by the response, and the quality of the submissions.

Until next time!...

Update 2 - Our Top 5

12 weeks, 117 proposals and 2000+ votes later, we have a top 5! Thank you so much to everyone who submitted and voted. We've been absolutely blown away by the response, and the quality of the submissions.

The top voted proposals will now be evaluated by an internal Prolific panel who will decide the winner within the next few weeks.

Here are our top 5:

1. How my colleagues help me achieve happiness, health, and productivity in careers: An 18-week 4-wave dyadic study
2. Knowledge activation and perspective taking in visual scene categorisation
3. Want to Improve your Memory? Use ANIMATES!
4. Feel & Think: Exploring different sensory modalities and memory as frontlines against infectious disease
5. Does the feeling that you’ll die young encourage unhealthy behaviour and worsen health inequalities?

Update - Some Rule Changes

The competition has been running for 5 weeks now, and we've had many fantastic entries!

But, some people have expressed concern that the duration of the competition is too short. So, to make sure everyone has enough time to enter and vote in the competition, we're announcing two changes:

1. A 2-week extension to the competition:
2. We'll now be accepting entries until July 14th 2021 at midnight (GMT)!
3. A 10-day voting-only period:
4. From July 15th - 25th, all proposals will be available for evaluation and voting only. This is to ensure that there is adequate time for our community to evaluate and vote for proposals submitted nearer to the deadline. So, at the very least, every proposal will get 10 days to gather votes.
5. We won't be accepting new entries during this time.

Please find all details for the competition below.

What is Prolific’s Research Grant Competition?

We're thrilled to announce the launch of our Research Grant Competition where we're giving away £10,000 ($14,000) in Prolific credit.

At Prolific, we want to empower great research. Our mission is to make trustworthy data more accessible to everybody, in order to facilitate world-changing insights. But, we know that insights don't come cheap! Funding matters, and it can be hard to come by. So, we want to do our bit to help you make your next world-changing discovery.

And we want our community to lead the process!

To enter, applicants must post their grant proposal on our forum, where our small, but global community of researchers will assess them and vote for the best ones. Our team will then review the five proposals with the most votes, and award the funding in accordance with our evaluation criteria (below).

(If the winning proposal does not need the entire prize pot, we will do our best to redistribute the remaining funds to our runners-up).

Join the forum!

Am I eligible to apply?

This is open to absolutely everybody, at any stage of their career, in any research field, in any country.

Each applicant can only submit one first-authored proposal. But, you are allowed to also be a co-author on other people's proposals.

How do I apply?

1. Make sure your grant proposal includes [1,000 words max in total]:
2. Description of the theoretical and/or practical importance of the research you intend to conduct
3. Description of the research methodology you will use
4. How or why you chose your sample size (this may or may not include a power analysis; consider thinking about the smallest effect size of interest, aka SESOI)
5. Description of the study costs: You can apply for up to £10,000. Don't worry if you don't need the whole pot. So, let us know how much funding will be needed and how will it be spent.
6. Don't forget to include the total study costs in addition to any extra funding you may need for bonus payments or custom screeners - (Note that the 33% service charge (and VAT where applicable) on each participant payment still applies as usual!)
7. Evidence that you’ve preregistered key aspects of your study. You can do this by including a link to your As Predicted-preregistration. (Wondering why you should preregister at all? Read more here!)
8. Explain how you’ll make your findings, study materials, analysis code and data openly available once the study is complete. (Please read about the importance of open, reproducible science).
9. (Check out one of our past winners of our Junior Researchers Grants to get an idea of the type of research we've funded in the past.)
10. Submit your grant proposal on the forum
11. Let the votes roll in!

How will the winner be decided?

Proposals will be voted on by our community. The five proposals that get the most votes will be evaluated by a Prolific review panel. If the winning proposal does not need the entire prize pot, we will do our best to redistribute the remaining funds to our runners-up.

Evaluation Criteria

• Potential to advance existing knowledge & potential for positive real-world impact
• Alignment with the principles of Open Science (e.g. preregistration, commitment to making all research material available, intention to publish in an open access journal)
• Quality and clarity of study design (including prescreener selection, power analysis, planned pilot studies, and appropriate analysis plan)
• Suitability for the Prolific platform (note: we cannot support overly complex studies, or ones that require the collection of personally identifiable information. Here are the kinds of complex studies we can support)

When is the deadline? And when are winners announced?

Proposals can be posted from today (May 5th 2021) until July 14th 2021 at midnight (GMT).

After that deadline, there will be a 10-day voting-only period:

• From July 15th - 25th , all proposals will be available for evaluation and voting only. This is to ensure there is adequate time for our community to evaluate and vote for proposals submitted nearer to the deadline. So, at the very least, every proposal will get 10 days to gather votes.
• We won’t be accepting new entries during this time.

Then we will take a couple of weeks to assess the applications and announce the winners on the forum, our blog, social media and via email as soon as possible.

The grant(s) will be awarded in the form of Prolific credit, directly to your Prolific researcher account.

Any catches?

No catches, but we would like to ask you for a case study on your project, when it is complete, to see how it all went.

Got more questions?

If you have any further questions, get in touch with Josh, our community manager 🙂