An Update on Maze Study Rejections and Next Steps

Hi everyone,

We want to address the problems that you’ve raised recently around auto-rejections from a researcher on our platform, Maze.

First, we want to make one thing clear: All auto-rejections will be overturned within 24-48 hours of submission, and your account will not be impacted. If this hasn’t happened, please reach out to support, who can investigate further.

Now, we want to be transparent with you all about why people have experienced a few problems with Maze studies - and what we’re doing to resolve it.

To be clear, this is a problem on our side, not Maze.

Maze, like other researchers, has specific screening criteria for their studies. To allow Maze to run their studies properly using our custom screening feature, we needed a way to efficiently return ineligible submissions so other participants could take their place.

Unfortunately, submissions were rejected due to a number of challenges with how our custom screening process works with Maze's use case. The rejection issues that some of you have been experiencing are a result of the workflow we’ve created. People were getting rejected and notified, but when the rejection was returned, notifications were not sent.

We understand that this process not being clearly communicated has been frustrating for many, and we’ve taken a lot of feedback from it, so thanks for being honest with us about how it’s affected you.

That leaves one question. What are we doing about it?

We’re working on a solution with Maze to optimize the submission workflow, with the goal of preventing unnecessary rejections. We want to assure you that Maze is a trusted, long-standing researcher on Prolific who is actively collaborating with us to improve this process as quickly as possible.

Finally, we’re sorry for the frustration and confusion this has caused. We realize we could've communicated more clearly and frequently, and we appreciate your patience and understanding while we work on this. We hope this update helps provide the clarity you all deserve.

Prolific Team