Recruiting Participants

Where do participants come from?

We don't make that decision for you! You can recruit from our in-house participant pool, bring your own students, or use third-party platforms like Prolific and Mechanical Turk. It's entirely up to you.

To make recruitment easy, we offer different session types based on where your participants come from. Keep reading the FAQs below to learn more!

Can I recruit participants from Prolific?

Yup! FindingFive has a built-in Prolific session type that makes the process seamless. Prolific participants don't need to create FindingFive accounts—they can simply click the study link, complete the experiment, and be automatically redirected to confirm their participation on Prolific. All you need to do is launch a Prolific session on FindingFive and share the study link on Prolific.

Can I recruit participants from MTurk?

Absolutely! FindingFive has supported Mechanical Turk integration since 2017, and it works exceptionally well. Your experiment is directly embedded on MTurk, so workers don't even have to leave the site to participate. This deep integration helps improve completion rates and reduces dropouts.

Can I bring my own undergraduate students as participants from SONA?

Yes! We offer a specific Institution session type designed for this purpose. You can share a study link with your students and direct them to FindingFive. Students will need to create participant accounts so that you can apply eligibility rules, such as requiring them to complete Study A before Study B, or ensuring they don't participate in the same study more than once.

If your department uses course credits for research participation, FindingFive also supports managing credit assignments. Check out this section to learn more.

Alternatively, if you don't want your students to sign up for FindingFive accounts, you can also make use of our “From Anywhere” session type. An anywhere session accepts participants directly without checking if they have signed up. But the drawback is that no eligibility control will be implemented. That is, FindingFive won't check if there's repeat participation from the same participant, or apply any eligibility filters based on the participant's information.

What if I use a recruitment platform that is not mentioned above?

Our "From Anywhere" session type is your best option. It allows anyone with the study link to participate without signing up. However, since FindingFive won't track participation history in such a session, we can't determine participant eligibility or prevent repeat participation. If you use this session type with a third-party platform, you'll need to manage those eligibility rules separately through the recruitment platform.

When do participants need to create a FindingFive account, and why?

Participants need to create an account when they are recruited through our in-house participant pool or an Institution session. This is necessary for eligibility control, such as:

• Preventing repeat participation. If you need to collect data over multiple sessions of the same experiment, FindingFive can automatically exclude participants who have already completed a session—but only if they have an account.
• Maintaining participant groups in multi-part studies. If your study spans multiple experiments and requires consistent participant assignment (e.g., keeping participants in Condition A across all parts), accounts allow us to track participation history and enforce group consistency.
• Applying participant eligibility filters. Some studies require specific eligibility rules, such as ensuring participants meet certain demographic criteria or have completed prerequisite tasks. FindingFive can only enforce these rules if participants have accounts.

When eligibility control isn't needed, our From Anywhere session type allows participants to take part without signing up. However, keep in mind that this means FindingFive won't track participation history, enforce eligibility rules, or prevent repeat participation.

What if fewer participants complete my session than I requested?

If your session is still active, you can extend the session from the Session Dashboard so it remains open longer. If your session has already closed, you can launch a duplicate session by clicking the three-dot menu next to the completed session and selecting “Recruit Again.”

For session types that require participant signups, your new session will automatically prevent previous participants from enrolling again.