This TikTok video of a teenager accidentally created a nuisance to thousands of scientific studies. How come? From this case we learn that going viral on the internet can be a blessing or a curse, and sometimes both.
That's what happened to the scientific survey platform, Prolific. A teen's TikTok video made the platform's name spread to millions of people. This is a good thing, right? That means more and more people know about this platform.
However, there is something to deal with as an unexpected consequence of their viral fame. Yes, as stated earlier, interference with thousands of scientific investigations.
It was a Florida teenager named Sarah Franklin who posted videos on TikTok and talked about how one can get paid to take surveys on sites like Prolific.co.
"Welcome to a side job, I recommend trying - part one," he says in the video.
"Basically, it's a collection of surveys for different amounts of money and different amounts of time."
The video was widely shared and so many people were involved that Prolific posted on Reddit about their viral fame.
But there's something I forgot to think about. Their respondents did increase, but the teen TikToker audience may not be representative of the general US population which is something important for conducting surveys where researchers have to rely on a wide variety of subjects for responses.
Data from the company shows that before July 24, participants were more or less equal in terms of gender and age range. A few days after the video went viral, baffled scientists discovered that 90% of their survey respondents were women with an average age of 21. According to The Verge, suppose 4,600 surveys were interrupted by a sudden influx of new participants.
The disturbance, fortunately, is not permanent. That's because the data seems to be slowly fading as the popularity of the TikTok video wanes.
Prolific has offered several fixes, and even compensation in some cases, to survey makers, some of whom have found a way to tackle the data, analyzing gender separately. Prolific also allows researchers to select respondents based on 'Participant Joining Date' and use their representative sample filter free of charge.
"We're dedicated to empowering you to do great research at Prolific, and data quality is our top priority," Prolific support lead Nick Charalambides said in a blog post.
"In addition to the steps above, we will also be monitoring the pool of participants on Prolific more closely to avoid similar spikes in enrollment, until we have stronger controls in place to allow you to easily balance your studies across specific demographics."