Creating studies is easy on Positly – researchers can get a new study off the ground in a matter of minutes! The basic steps are as follows:

1. Create your Project 
   • This is the top level container that holds your Runs
2. Create your Run 
   1. Set up Run details including a link to your Activity 
   2. Target the Participants you want
   3. Set the pricing
      • Add credit if you haven’t already 
3. Set it live and watch the results come in! 
   • First you’ll need to copy the Completion link and put it at the end of your Activity 

Once you have created your first Run you can then create more Runs in the same Project and retarget or exclude previous participants.

To be automatically Approved for an Assignment and receive their incentive, all Participants must finish the Activity by being redirected to the Feedback survey via the Completion link. The two main ways to add an end of activity link are to automatically redirect the participant, or to include it at the end of an Activity (as a link or button).

1. Redirect participant automatically to Completion link

Many providers allow for redirects and this is often preferable. Here are the instructions for common providers:

• GuidedTrack
• Qualtrics
• SurveyMonkey
• Typeform 

In these cases simply use the Completion link we provide you as the redirection link.

2. Instruct participant to click Completion link

Not all providers allow for redirects (such as Google Forms), or you may want to make sure that they click or copy and paste the link for various reasons. In which case you can simply provide them with the link in your success message. In most cases this is in plain text, however in Google Forms you need to add the message through the settings. Here are the instructions for Google Forms.

3. Use *program in GuidedTrack

If you have built your activity in GuidedTrack you can use one of these programs to automatically generate an End of Activity link, button or redirect:

• *program: EndOfActivityButton (for a button)
• *program: EndOfActivityRedirect (for a redirect)
• *program: EndOfActivity (for a link)

Positly provides researchers with unique Participant identifiers and Demographic attributes and other helpful attributes about Participants. To properly identify an Assignment it is a requirement to set up your Activity to receive the Assignment ID, it is often helpful to also store the Participant ID also. This participant information is automatically passed through to the Activity link using Query string parameters which you can then store, or even use in an activity to dynamically change the way it behaves for users (see this example). Depending on the software you are using for your study, you may need to set up your software to receive these participant attributes. We recommend using GuidedTrack because by default it will accept any query string while most other tools require that you set them up manually. Here are instructions for receiving this data on popular survey tools:

• GuidedTrack using Custom-Loaded Variables
• Qualtrics using Embedded data
• SurveyMonkey using Custom Data (free) or Custom Variables (paid feature)
• Typeform using Hidden Fields (paid feature)
• Google Forms using Pre-filled Links

Pilot studies are crucial in good study design. A ‘pilot study’ is a mini version of your full study that is intended to ensure that your main study is maximally successful. It’s incredibly important to get your studies right and piloting your studies is one of the best ways of doing that. At Positly we recommend you use a sample of 20 or fewer for your first Run of an Activity to check that the following elements are done well:

• You have integrated your study successfully
• Your data is showing up as expected
• You have targeted the right Participants
• Your time estimates are accurate

Not only does Positly warn you when you are about to launch a Run of your study’s Activity without piloting, we also provide detailed Feedback from Participants on the quality of your study as well as statistics around its performance (e.g. average and median time). If everything works as expected then simply duplicate the pilot study and change the number of desired Participants.

Further reading In their 2001 paper  Edwin & Hundley  provide a broad range of additional reasons to first conduct a pilot study:

• Develop and test adequacy of research instruments
• Assess the feasibility of a (full-scale) study/survey
• Design a research protocol
• Assess whether the research protocol is realistic and workable
• Establish whether the sampling frame and technique are effective
• Assess the likely success of proposed recruitment approaches
• Identify logistical problems which might occur using proposed methods
• Estimate variability in outcomes to help determining sample size
• Collect preliminary data
• Determine what resources (finance, staff) are needed for a planned study
• Assess the proposed data analysis techniques to uncover potential problems
• Develop a research question and research plan
• Train a researcher in as many elements of the research process as possible
• Convince funding bodies that the research team is competent and knowledgeable
• Convince funding bodies that the main study is feasible and worth funding
• Convince other stakeholders that the main study is worth supporting