Frequently Asked Questions for Researchers

Part 1. The Basics

What can I do at FindingFive?

FindingFive is a complete, standalone, one-stop platform for running online behavioral studies. You can quickly set up an online behavioral study without any prior experience in designing a web app. You have customized control over participant recruitment that makes sense. To make things even better, as soon as a study session is finished, participant data are organized in a sensible format for immediate download.

You can also use FindingFive with Prolific and Amazon Mechanical Turk. You can still create and manage your studies entirely on FindingFive, but participants will be recruited through Prolific or Amazon Mechanical Turk using our integrations.

Why should I use FindingFive instead of other platforms?

FindingFive streamlines the research process by allowing researchers to create professional-looking web-based studies, control the recruitment of participants, run studies and collect data—all on a single, affordable, and easy-to-use platform. These features are designed specifically for researchers and not available—or not easily or affordably achievable—with most other platforms.

To make it easier for researchers to "make" online studies, FindingFive uses a new grammar, named FindingFive Study Grammar, which does not involve much programming at all. Instead, it spells out both the content and logic of a study in intuitive terms that are already familiar to you. We have written a lot of documentation to help you get started using the Study Grammar - check out our comprehensive Study Grammar Documentation.

I am a JavaScript expert and already know other platforms very well. Why should I invest time in using FindingFive?

Because coding up a complete experiment from scratch is a significant time commitment, and taking care of the nitty-gritty details such as data encryption can be burdensome. For simple studies that do not require a lot of customizations, FindingFive can save you a lot of time! Check out the Crash Course to see how straightforward it is to create a study.

I am a student running studies on behalf of my lab. How should I sign up?

Regardless of whether you are a graduate student dedicated to research or an undergraduate research assistant, we encourage you to sign up for free as a researcher and as **yourself** on FindingFive. To show that you are conducting research on behalf of your lab (or research group), follow this Create a "Lab Account" Tutorial to set up a separate account that centralizes study management. With a lab account, you and your lab mates can collaborate on experiments and run them in a way so that participants will see the studies as coming from your lab rather than you personally.

Will the IRB (or other equivalent subject protection committee) at my institution give approval for running studies on FindingFive?

Our service is used by many US-based and EU-based institutions. If there is any specific concern, we'd be happy to work with you and your institution. Feel free to contact us at [email protected] for this purpose.

How do I pay my participants?

For studies launched directly on FindingFive, we support paying participants directly via PayPal or a digital gift card (including a digital debit card option). The choice between getting a PayPal transfer or a digital gift card is up to participants. See the Participation Reward and Direct Payment section for more details.

For studies launched on Prolific, payment is processed by Prolific. For studies launched on Mechanical Turk, payment is processed by Amazon. We will check your AWS account balance to make sure it has enough funds to cover the cost of your study session before launching it.

You are free to arrange payments on your own as well. Please provide sufficient instructions to your participants on how they will get paid if your study promises a cash reward.

Can I reward participants with course credits?

Of course! You can launch a study on FindingFive without any cash compensation and include information about course credits in your study description. We also offer a paid feature that streamlines the process of granting course credits to students and reporting those credit rewards to your department's administrator for verification and management.

Part 2. Study design

How do I create a study?

Studies are created by specifying the structure of your experiment using our Study Grammar. The grammar allows for various types of randomization, blocking control, conditional branching, presentation of different types of stimuli, and collection of many types of participant responses such as choice, text, audio recording, self-paced reading, and mousetracking.

We also provide a small (but growing) collection of study templates so that you don't have to start from scratch when creating a new study.

What types of stimuli can I use in my study?

FindingFive supports text, images, audio, and video stimuli, including dynamic “tokenized” stimuli useful for self-paced reading and other paradigms. We have a dedicated "Files" page to make it simple to upload your stimulus files, either individually or as a ZIP file. Each upload must be less than 100MB in size, which should be sufficient for most cases. If you have particularly large files to use, please get in touch with us.

What types of participant data are recorded?

The types of participant data recorded during a study session are dependent on the types of responses used in a study. For example, if a trial features a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) response, it automatically records a participant's choice, the reaction time, and whether it is a correct response or not (if the correct answer is given). In general, recording of participant data is automatically handled by our platform for you.

If my participants aren't in the lab, how do I make sure they're paying attention during my study?

The study specification grammar offers a built-in "catch trials" feature. This allows you to set up your own test to make sure that participants are paying attention and on-track with your study. For example, let's say your study asks participants to listen to lists of words, presented as audio stimuli. You could set up a catch trial every 5 trials, where participants are asked to type the word that they just heard on the previous trial. This allows you to check whether the participant correctly heard your audio stimulus, and whether their attention wavered at any point during the study. You can click here to read more about it in the Study Grammar documentation.

The study specification grammar isn't sophisticated enough for my study. What can I do?

We are continuously improving the grammar to include more features. If the current grammar cannot accommodate your study design, please email us at [email protected] and tell us how our grammar falls short for your study, so that we can work with you to improve the grammar and make your study possible.

Part 3. Researcher Subscriptions

What is a Researcher Subscription?

Researcher subscriptions are our main source of revenue as a nonprofit. There are three primary kinds of paid subscription plans: Essential, Standard and Pro. While it is possible to use the FindingFive Study Grammar to build your studies for free, you will need a subscription to launch your study and collect data from participants. Subscriptions start at only $20 USD per year or $10 USD per month. A subscription also gives you access to advanced features and hefty discounts on Session Fees. You can read more on our Pricing page for the US Server or the EU server.

How do I add a subscription?

Adding a subscription is now completely automated. Just sign into your FindingFive account and navigate to the "Expenses" page under "Research". There you can see the pricing for different plans, compare plans, and select a plan for purchase. You can also add "Plus 1s" to a subscription at a significant discount.

What are Plus 1s?

Plus 1s are significantly discounted "add-on subscriptions" that enable you to add colleagues or students to your subscription plan, so that they can enjoy the same plan benefits as you do. To make it even better, Plus 1s' usage quotas, including storage for files and participation record exemptions (see below), are calculated separately so that you won't share those quotas with your Plus 1s.

To add someone as a Plus 1, they must not already have an existing subscription. It is possible to add Plus 1s when you first purchase a subscription or to an existing subscription. Plus 1s added to an existing subscription will be prorated according to the billing cycle of the parent subscription.

How do I pay for a subscription?

Once you've configured a plan, click "Check out" and add your debit or credit card information to pay. Your payment card information is securely processed by Square. Once the subscription is active, it'll renew automatically using the same card for each new billing cycle (monthly for monthly subscribers and annually for annual subscribers).

How does upgrading or downgrading a subscription work?

If you upgrade your plan, the upgraded subscription will be effective immediately. If you are switching to a plan with fewer features (e.g., moving from Pro to Standard), your subscription will go into effect at the beginning of the next billing cycle.

I am currently on a monthly subscription. How can I switch to an annual one? (or vice versa)

Just create a new annual (or monthly) subscription and activate it. The new subscription, if its plan is the same type as your current one, will be scheduled to take effect at the moment your current subscription expires. The transition will be seamless. If it represents a plan upgrade, it will be effective immediately.

What happens when I cancel my paid subscription?

When you cancel your paid subscription, your benefits, including those for your Plus 1s, will stay active until the end of the current billing cycle. After that, your subscription will expire, you and your Plus 1s will all lose all plan benefits, and your payment card will not be charged again.

Can I get a refund on my subscription fee?

Unfortunately, we do not issue refunds for subscriptions under any circumstances.

I want to set up subscriptions for my entire lab or research group, can I get a discount?

Yes! That's what Plus 1s are designed for—you can sign up for a primary subscription with as many Plus 1s as your lab's headcount. In addition, all plans offer powerful features that make collaboration between lab members easier.

Part 4. Participation Reward and Direct Payment

Where can I use the direct payment features?

The direct payment features are for sessions run on FindingFive only. Sessions launched using Prolific or Mechanical Turk go through their payment system.

How do I make a deposit?

You can make a deposit from the Expenses page under "Research". Depending on the currency, you can either use PayPal—which accepts PayPal payments, credit and debit cards—or directly enter your debit or credit card info.

How do I pay participants?

In short, we take care of most of the work. When you are ready to launch a study, use the calculator in the new session wizard to determine how much it will cost to run your study. Make an additional deposit if your account balance won't cover all the cost. Once your study successfully launches, we'll make sure that your participants get paid.

Does FindingFive charge any fees?

Yes. FindingFive charges a flat fee of $0.75 per participant on the US server and €0.75 per participant on the EU server. These fees allow us to keep our payment system running, including by covering the fees that our payment processors charge us for accepting deposits from researchers and transferring payments to participants.

When will my account balance be deducted for the cost of a session?

Upon launching the study, the funds will be immediately withheld from your account and held for participant payment. Participants who complete your study will automatically be approved for payment, which will be deposited in their reward balance accounts immediately.

What if fewer participants complete my study than I requested?

If a study session ends or is terminated before the target participant count is reached, the unused portion of funds (including costs for participants and FindingFive fees) will be automatically returned to your account in 1-3 hours after the session terminates. Please note that compensation will be held for in-progress participants until they complete the study or abandon it. You may receive your returned funds in multiple installments as in-progress participants gradually abandon your study over time.

Can I withdraw the leftover funds in my account balance?

Of course! If you wish to withdraw remaining funds from your FindingFive account, you may contact our researcher support team ([email protected]), and we will provide a refund to your original payment method within 3-5 business days. A refund fee of $0.50 (US server) or €0.50 (EU server) may be deducted from the refund.

In the case where the refund request is made more than 90 days after the original deposit, we can no longer issue a refund to the original payment method due to limitations imposed by our payment processors. In such cases, we will either make a direct bank transfer or mail a paper check (within the United States) to issue the refund. A refund fee of $1.00 (US server) or €1.00 (EU server) may be deducted from the refund.

Can I award bonuses to participants?

Yes. You can do that on the session management page.

Can I *not* pay a participant by rejecting their work?

No, rejection of participant work on the basis of quality is not permitted on FindingFive. You may decide to exclude the participant's work from your data, but they still must be paid. Payment of participants will be automatic; you are not required to approve participant work for payment. You may terminate a research study at any time, but terminating a study does not mean that you will not have to pay participants who have submitted studies for payment.

How do I verify that someone participated in my study if they do not complete it?

You should make sure that you request contact information from all participants in the new session wizard, as shown in the screenshot below:

Once you have done so, when a participant does not complete a study, their data are not made available to you, but the amount of time they spend on a study will be. You can use this information as a basis for determining what actions to take should that participant contact you for help.

What do I do if I'm having disputes with a participant?

If you are having disputes with a participant, efforts should first be made to resolve the issue through direct contact with the participant. If you are unable to resolve the issue, FindingFive may, but is not obligated to, assist in negotiating a mutually acceptable agreement. If FindingFive does intervene, and a mutually acceptable agreement cannot be reached, FindingFive reserves the right to make the final decision, which may require you to issue additional payment to participants.

Part 5. Session Fees

What is a session fee?

We charge a session fee that is based on "participation records", where a participation record refers to a single completed participation event in a production session. This fee will apply to all studies.

Sessions fees are based on "participation records", but what does this mean?

We are using the term "participation records" mainly to highlight our policy that you pay per completed participation, not per participant. In other words, if a single individual participant completes more than one of your study sessions, those will be counted as multiple participation records, instead of a single one. This is most applicable in cases where you want to recruit the same participants for multiple sessions, such as in longitudinal or “chained” study designs.

Partial participations, including those who leave a study voluntarily, due to technical issues, or simply time out, do not count, so you will not be charged for participants whose data do not show up in the CSV data file.

What are participation record exemptions?

Session fees are waived for a certain number of participation records per subscription cycle (see details on our pricing page for the US Server or the EU server). Those participation records will not be counted when determining the balance due on a session fee bill. In other words, you only pay session fees for participation records in excess of what is included in your subscription plan.

How are participation record exemptions tallied?

Participation record exemptions will be applied per subscription cycle. For example, assume you subscribe on Jan 15, 2024. If it is a monthly subscription, your participation record exemptions will reset on Feb 15. If it is an annual subscription, your participation record exemptions will reset on Jan 15, 2025.

How do participation record exemptions work in sessions that span multiple subscription cycles?

If your study session happens to span two subscription cycles (even if the session only lasts a few days), participation record exemptions allocated across multiple subscription cycles will apply, based on the time when a participant starts the session.

For example, let's assume you have a monthly subscription to the Standard Plan (which has 25 exemptions per month) starting on the 15th. If you launch a session on the 10th that ends on the 20th, that session spans two monthly subscription cycles. During the 10th-14th, 13 participants started and completed the study; during the 15th-20th, 20 participants started and completed the study. Assuming this is the only session launched across these cycles, your final bill for this session will actually be $0. That’s because the first 13 participation records were exempted under the first cycle's quota, and the other 20 are exempted under the second cycle's quota.

Will participation record exemptions stay in effect even after I cancel my subscription?

The exemptions will still be in effect as long as your canceled subscription has a remaining term left (please see above for what happens when you cancel a subscription). In the case where a session remains active after your subscription expires, participant data collected after subscription expiration will be charged $0.50 per participation record.

When are session fees charged?

Session fees will be charged only after researchers obtain the participant data. Specifically, a session fee bill will be generated upon the first download of data from a session. Subsequent downloads of the data from that session will not result in additional fees. You can choose to pay the session fee bill immediately or at a later date.

How much will I be charged for session fees?

You will be charged $0.50 per participation record that is not exempted under your subscription plan. For more pricing details, visit the pricing page on the US Server or the EU server.

When do I need to pay my session fee bills?

Session fee bills are due within 15 days of downloading the data. You will receive a reminder to pay your bill before the 15 days are up. If you do not pay the bill in time, it will be considered overdue, and you will be unable to launch new sessions until you pay the overdue balance.

In addition, if your session fee balance reaches $100/€100, you must pay your balance before you can launch new sessions again. This is in parallel to the 15-day due date on individual bills.

How do FindingFive's rates compare to other platforms?

Even with the session fee, FindingFive is the most affordable platform that integrates study creation, recruitment, and payment all in the same place. As far as platform fees go, researchers running 100 participants a year can save almost $300 and large research labs can save over $3,000 by using FindingFive! For details on cost comparisons with other research platforms, see this blog post for details.

Part 6. Data Collection, Storage, and Identifiability

How secure is data collection on FindingFive?

FindingFive uses HTTPS, also known as HTTP over SSL, for *all* activities taking place on FindingFive's web platform. This means that all data, including participants' responses, are transmitted in encrypted forms over the Internet. The encryption methods we use are state-of-the-art and pose minimum risks in leaking participants' data.

Where are participant data stored?

Participant data are stored on FindingFive's cloud servers. For EU researchers, those servers are located in Frankfurt, Germany and Paris, France. For all other researchers, those servers are located in Newark, NJ, Chicago, IL, and Atlanta, GA.

How safe is the stored participant data?

Participant data are stored in password-protected databases, where the passwords provide a first layer of defense against data leak. Furthermore, these databases are set up behind a layer of Virtual Private Networks (VPN), meaning that only FindingFive's team can access such databases. As a result, participant data on FindingFive are very safe as they are completely closed off, as if non-existent, to the Internet at large.

Are participant data stored in an encrypted form?

Optionally. For most studies, although the transmission of participant data *is* encrypted, once the data reach our servers, they are stored plainly on our servers. However, all subscribers can optionally create **encrypted studies**, where participant data are not only transmitted in an encrypted form, but also stay encrypted in our database. This practice, known as "encryption at rest", provides a strong layer of protection for participant data as they will be complete gibberish to an unauthorized party. Please consult your local laws and regulations if such encryption is necessary for your research, especially if your studies collect sensitive personally identifiable data.

Is there any redundancy in the storage of participant data?

Of course! Data on FindingFive's US servers are backed up in three different locations, under the same level of security as described above. Data on the EU server are backed up in two different locations.

To what extent does FindingFive remove identifiable personal information?

Once a study session is finished, you will be able to download participant data. Each participant will be identified by a special ID, non-reversably generated from their real FindingFive ID and your researcher FindingFive ID. As a result, each participant will have a persistent ID in the studies of the same researcher, but that ID differs between researchers, and does not exist in our database at all.

Under most circumstances, IRBs prohibit the collection of personally identifiable information in human subjects research. However, if a researcher has a unique situation that requires the collection of personally identifiable data, it is possible to collect this information via a response. In this case, researchers **must** use the Encrypted Study, rather than the Standard Study option. Researchers who collect personally identifiable information within their studies assume full responsibility for any losses or damages due to data security breaches. In the event of a data breach, researchers must promptly notify their IRBs (and other relevant authorities), as well as any affected parties. FindingFive reserves the right to require researchers to perform any action deemed necessary to remedy or mitigate the data breach or to prevent future data breaches.

Why can't a researcher download participant data from an active session?

Downloading participant data from an active session is a major privacy concern. As participants start working on your experiment, their names and emails may be made available to you (see the next question). If downloading participant data from an active session were allowed, then it would be theoretically possible to match up the identities of participants to their data by checking the data every time a new participant completes the study. Linking identities to data is explicitly prohibited by most IRBs, and is never appreciated by participants.

As a result, in order to minimize the chance of participant data being linked to their identities, we only allow participant data to be downloaded after a session is complete or canceled by a researcher.

Do I get participants' contact information?

It's up to you and what your IRB allows. You can choose to get contact information of all participants, only those who complete your study, or no one at all. Importantly, their contact information is provided to you separately from the participant data, so that you can never link the contact information to participants' data.

What if my home institution requires the collection of demographic information?

Some non-identifiable demographic information can be requested at the time of data download. We encourage you to negoitate with your IRB on this issue, however. In our experience, most IRBs are fine with collecting data from anonymous participants online.