GUIDES
The craft of surveys that produce trustworthy data.
Short and practical, written from the research literature and from building the tool. No tool required to use any of it, though every technique here is one toggle in Plumeform.
8 MIN READ
Choosing a survey tool for Prolific studies →
The seven capabilities that decide your fielding week, and an honest comparison of Qualtrics, Typeform, Google Forms, and Plumeform against them.
6 MIN READ
Prolific completion codes, set up right →
The three URLs of a panel study, why you redirect AND show the code, what screened-out participants need, and the two-minute pre-launch test.
7 MIN READ
How to stop duplicate survey participants →
Where duplicates really come from, why cookies aren't a control, and the layered defense that keeps a dataset one-person-one-row.
8 MIN READ
Screening participants without burning money →
Unguessable eligibility questions, quotas that close themselves, and screen-out etiquette that keeps your panel reputation intact.
7 MIN READ
Random assignment in survey experiments →
Running a real A/B experiment inside a survey: server-side assignment, condition-driven branching, and the audit trail your analysis needs.
7 MIN READ
Informed consent for online surveys →
What the consent screen must communicate, a copy-paste template, honest withdrawal language for anonymous data, and a gate that records nothing on decline.
7 MIN READ
How many survey responses do you need? →
The margin-of-error math without the jargon, the sample sizes worth memorizing, and why your response rate decides more than your audience size.
9 MIN READ
How to catch low-quality survey responses →
Speeders, straight-liners, bots, and duplicates each leave a signature. How to detect them, design them out, and clean without fooling yourself.
8 MIN READ
How to write attention check questions →
The four types of checks, the writing rules that catch careless responders without punishing honest ones, and what to do with failures.
7 MIN READ
Survey randomization, explained →
What order effects do to your data, what to shuffle and what to pin, and the one method sentence that satisfies reviewers.
9 MIN READ
Likert scale best practices →
Five or seven points, midpoint or not, labels, item wording, matrix batteries people finish, and what the numbers honestly support.