This is step 3 in our step-by-step guide to setting up a study on Prolific.

In this step, you’ll choose where your participants come from, define your target audience, set your participant count, and configure how your study will be distributed.

When setting up your study, you’ll first choose where you want to recruit participants from. The options available depend on your research needs and subscription.

You can choose from the following sources:

Specify how many participants you want to recruit for your study.

Start with a small sample when possible. For most study types, you can increase your participant count after launch. Consider running a small pilot first to make sure your study works as expected before recruiting a larger sample. See our guide to running pilot studies for more information.

Check the requirements for representative samples. If you're recruiting a representative sample, you must recruit between 300 and 2,000 participants in the US, or up to 3,000 participants in the UK. Other study types don't have a participant limit.

Understand when your study will close. Your study will remain open until it reaches your specified participant count. Only submissions with an Active, Awaiting review, or Approved status count towards this total.

For more information, see our guides to submission statuses and pausing recruitment.

If participants need login details to access your study, enter the credentials here. These details will be shared with participants before they begin.

You must provide the credentials yourself. You can't ask participants to share their personal login information, as collecting personal information isn't allowed on Prolific.

When adding credentials, keep the following requirements in mind:

Filters help you find participants who meet your research criteria before they enter your study.

You have two options:

When you apply filters, Prolific will show you how many participants match your criteria. If fewer than five participants qualify, we'll hide the exact number to protect participant privacy.

Filter sets are saved templates of prescreening criteria. They're particularly useful if you regularly recruit participants with the same characteristics.

For example, if your research frequently requires participants who are right-handed, bilingual, and aged 30, you can save these criteria as a filter set. You can then apply the set to future studies instead of selecting each filter individually.

For step-by-step instructions, see our Filter sets article.

Choose the countries your participants should live in.

You can quickly select one of the most common options:

To recruit from another specific country, select All countries, then search or browse the available country list. Countries are organised by popularity first, followed by alphabetical order.

Next, decide how your study should be distributed to participants. You can choose from three sample types.

Your study will be distributed to all available participants who meet your selected criteria.

Your study will aim to balance recruitment by sex, distributing the study evenly between male and female participants.

Your study will recruit participants according to UK or US census data to help achieve a representative sample of the relevant population.

Representative sampling has specific requirements, limitations, and cost considerations. See our Representative sample article for detailed guidance, including information about the data sources used.

Use demographic filters to narrow your participant pool and target the audience you need.

For example, you could select criteria for participants who are right-handed, bilingual, and aged 30.

We recommend using Prolific's prescreening tools to identify eligible participants before they start your study.

Please don't screen participants within your study based on eligibility criteria, or include screening requirements only in your study title or description. This can create a frustrating experience for participants who discover they aren't eligible after starting.

Instead, apply the relevant filters during study setup to reach your intended audience from the outset.

For more information, see Can I screen participants within my study?

Choose how many times each participant can complete your study.

You have two options:

Multiple submissions can be useful when you want to collect data about different experiences or events from the same participant.
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For example, if you're researching recurring consumer behaviour, you might ask: "What did you order from Deliveroo this week?"
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A participant who ordered delivery five times that week could provide multiple entries, giving you more insight into their purchasing decisions.
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Before enabling multiple submissions, make sure your study design supports repeat participation and that your maximum submission limit reflects your research needs.

You can enable Prolific's option to automatically reject exceptionally fast submissions. This helps identify submissions completed significantly faster than your estimated completion time, which may indicate low-quality responses.
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Before enabling this option, make sure your estimated completion time is accurate and appropriate for your study.
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For more information about how this feature works and how to manage these submissions, see Bulk rejecting exceptionally fast submissions.
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Before launching your study, check that you've:

Once you've checked these settings, you're ready to continue setting up your study and prepare for recruitment.

Next step: Study cost

Previous step: Data collection