How many participants are you recruiting?

The first factor affecting the cost of your project is how many people you want to recruit. Simply enter the number of participants you need.

How much are you paying each person?

You determine how much each person should be paid for completing your project. The cost of your project is a function of the number of participants you recruit multiplied by the payment to each person.

Our Participant Payment Bar ensures fair compensation for survey participants is set. The Participant Payment Bar is an interactive visual indicator integrated into the study setup process on Connect. It evaluates the pay rate you set for the study and provides feedback on whether the compensation is low good, or great based on industry standards.

In cases where the participant payment is set too low, our system will not let you save the project. This is because the site minimum is $7.50/hour. 

Note: We encourage researchers to pay within the norms for online studies. Over the last several years, these norms have emerged to be about $7.50-$10 per hour for surveys that require basic tasks (e.g., answering multiple choice questions). The price/participant of $7.50/hour is our site minimum while our baseline for fast data collection is $10/hour. For projects that require more engagement or effort, payment should increase. 

How long does your project take?

Finally, enter how long your project should take to complete. The estimated completion time communicates to participants how long they might be engaged in your task and allows Connect to display an estimated hourly wage.

Platform Fees

CloudResearch charges a 25% platform fee for Connect Academic and Non-Profit Researchers. Thus, the total cost of your study is whatever payments you make to participants plus 25%. All other researchers will incur a 40% platform fee. To learn more about this please click here. The pricing tool displays each project's total cost. 

Advanced Options

Under the Cost section during set up, there is an "Advanced Options" dropdown that lets you customize settings like the mac time allotted for the project, automatic approval period, end date of the project, and max participants that can enter at once. 

Max Time Allotted for Project

The maximum time allotted refers to the time each participant has to complete the study once they start. The default for this is 4 times the expected completion time you set the study to. For example, if the study is set to take 4 mins, then the default max completion time is 8 mins. This is how long the participant has to submit their participation once they accept the study. 

In cases where they accept to take the study but the max time allotted has been reached, they will be marked as "Timed Out" in the Manage area of the study. To learn more about this status read this article here. 

Auto Approval Period

The auto-approval period on Connect is the time frame within which participant submissions are automatically approved if no action is taken by the researcher. Setting the auto-approval period to "0" means that as soon as someone submits, they will automatically be paid and approved. This is not recommended for researchers who want to review participant data before choosing who they want to pay and approve. 

• The maximum auto-approval period is 14 days from each participant's submission timestamp.
• By default, the auto-approval period is also set to 14 days unless manually adjusted by the researcher.

This ensures timely review and processing of submissions while giving researchers enough flexibility to review responses before they are automatically approved. To learn how to manually process any pending participants, please follow this article here. 

Project Set End Date

In Connect, the project end date determines when the study will stop accepting participants. Researchers are able to keep it open until it completes (the set N size of submitted responses is received) or at a specified day/time they would like the study to stop. 

Participant Limit

This feature helps limit the number of participants who can join the project simultaneously.

This can help in several ways when running studies on Connect:

1. Technical Stability: When you are collecting data on a custom platform, high volumes of concurrent participants can place strain on servers, lead to slower page loads, or even result in technical errors. Throttling ensures that the survey platform runs smoothly, improving the participant experience and reducing dropout rates related to technical difficulties. 
2. Demand: Some studies focus on limiting the number of participants that enter at once for batching purposes. 

In essence, limiting the number of participants that can enter at once size ensures that the data collection process remains stable and under the researcher’s control.