It's a walkthrough of software... which means the AI is guided by a background prompt.... which means the researcher should know *exactly* how long it will take to perform the walkthough... the AI says it'll be 10 minutes for the journey in a 20min expected study, but it took almost 30 minutes just to get through the walkthrough and there was a feedback survey at the end, so half the expected pay. Prolific REALLY needs to get on researchers about their studies taking too long by tracking user behavior for activity and charging researchers for significant overage. This study only had 45 minutes allotted and between messaging the researcher about this and filling out the survey, I only had 5 minues left and I'm typically worried about being hit for speeding. This is essentially a form of wage theft via deception no matter how much you actually get hourly.
Agreed. It very much is wage theft because you can't move on and do other things when planned when their time estimates are so dishonest. You're trapped if you want to complete it and get paid.