How researchers achieved 92% completion at every wave in a longitudinal study on divine forgiveness
In recent years, there has been a growing body of research into the psychology of divine forgiveness. However, most of this research has been cross-sectional, capturing a snapshot rather than how people experience repentance and absolution from God over time.
Richard Cowden, Research Scientist at Harvard University, and Kaye Cook, Professor of Psychology at Gordon College, wanted to examine how forgiveness from God unfolds in the days right after someone believes they've done something wrong.
To do this, they needed to find U.S. Christian adults who reported a specific act of wrongdoing within the 24 hours before screening, invite eligible participants to the first assessment that same day, and then follow them across five surveys over 16 days. With Prolific's prescreening and Managed Services support, they completed this unusually time-sensitive study in under three weeks, achieving over 92% wave-specific participation throughout. Approximately 84% of enrolled participants completed all five assessments.
The challenge
Richard and Kaye's wider research program looks at divine forgiveness not simply as a belief that "God forgives", but as a relational process. “We wanted to study how engaging in repentance and experiencing absolution change over time, how the two processes are connected, and whether they predicted a renewed or deeper sense of communion with God,” explains Richard.
This was a complex, time-sensitive longitudinal study design that hinged on finding and retaining the right people at the right moment. Participants first had to complete a screening survey where they described something they'd done in the past 24 hours that they felt went against God's standards, and rated how forgiven they currently felt and how confident they were that God had forgiven them. To qualify for the main study, participants had to report low feelings of forgiveness and low confidence that God had forgiven them.
Eligible participants were invited to the first assessment on the day they completed the screener. Across five surveys spanning 16 days, they would rate statements such as "I have acknowledged to God the full extent of this transgression" and "I feel cleansed by God from the guilt I have experienced because of this transgression," always in reference to the same incident they'd described at the outset.
Reaching a niche sample in a narrow, unpredictable window
Recruiting for this study would be especially challenging. Participants had to:
Have committed a perceived wrongdoing within the 24 hours before the screening.
Be willing and able to describe it in writing.
Report low initial feelings of being forgiven by God.
Report low confidence that God had forgiven them.
Because eligibility hinged on an unpredictable, time-sensitive personal event, the team had no benchmark for how many people they'd need to screen to get a workable sample. And once eligible participants were identified, the researchers also had to review sensitive written narratives, protect data quality, invite people into the first survey that same day, and retain them across four further waves.
Recruiting a sample of this size in person, so soon after a specific personal wrongdoing, would not have been feasible. So, they turned to Prolific and its Managed Services team for support.
The solution
Precise prescreening and hands-on support
“Prolific was well-suited to the unusual design,” says Richard. Its prescreening tools let the team filter for U.S. adults who identified as Christian, engaged in religious activity, and held a survey approval rating of at least 97%. That produced a starting pool of 5,341 potentially eligible participants.
From there, the team used Qualtrics to build and administer the actual surveys, while Prolific handled prescreening, recruitment, authenticity checks, and participant management across every wave.
A two-stage design run to an exacting schedule
Because eligibility depended on a very specific recent event, the study needed a two-stage process: a screener to find and verify eligible participants, followed by a same-day invitation to the first assessment and four more waves on days 2, 4, 8, and 16.
Prolific's Managed Services team helped operationalize this by:
Providing data exports every few hours during the initial screening window, allowing the researchers to quickly review narratives and qualify participants.
Adding eligible participants into the next follow-up survey and tracking completion rates against the target sample size.
Configuring Qualtrics for each wave, flowing participants' previous responses into later surveys so they could respond to questions about their own specific incident.
Sending wave invitations and reminders through in-app messaging, and pinning studies to participants' dashboards to keep them prominent.
Handling survey closures to keep each wave's response window precise.
Providing a tracking sheet so the research team could follow progress throughout.
The full process, from screener launch to final wave, took just under three weeks.
The results
92%+ wave-specific completion across 16 days
The screener launched on November 4, 2025, and closed four days later, with 2,481 people completing it and passing authenticity checks. This marked the end of screening; follow-up assessments continued afterward, through day 16 for enrolled participants. “This was an impressive number, given that we needed to screen many participants to get a decent sample for the main study,” Richard notes.
Of those screened, 239 met the study's eligibility criteria, and 175 enrolled by completing the first assessment. Among these 175 enrolled participants:
~84% completed all five assessments.
~95% of all possible person-wave observations were obtained across the five assessments.
No item-level data were missing for the primary variables among participants who completed each wave.
Richard points to several factors that may have contributed to the study’s high retention rates.
“We recruited participants with a strong approval record and enrolled them immediately after the screener,” he says. “They were fairly compensated in accordance with Prolific’s pay policy. And we could contact the same participants reliably across waves.”
“Also, the study was anchored to a recent, personally meaningful experience, which may have helped sustain engagement.”
New insights into repentance and forgiveness
By screening participants within 24 hours of a specific act of wrongdoing and inviting eligible participants to the first assessment that same day, the researchers could study experiences of reconciliation with God close to the event. “This longitudinal study gave us an unusual opportunity to observe that process close to the time it was actually occurring, rather than asking people to reconstruct it much later,” says Kaye.
The findings, published in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, showed that repentance and absolution followed a similar pattern, with a sharp rise in the first few days that then leveled off. But the two processes didn't move in lockstep. Repentance was already relatively high by the first assessment, while absolution started lower and increased more steeply.
This difference needs to be understood in light of the study’s eligibility criteria: participants were deliberately selected because they initially reported low feelings of forgiveness and low confidence that God had forgiven them. The findings therefore describe people who initially struggled to feel forgiven, and patterns may differ for those who feel forgiven more readily.
The timing of the two processes also differed. When someone reported greater repentance than usual, they tended to report a greater sense of absolution at the next assessment. However, feeling more forgiven than usual did not reliably predict greater repentance afterward. Feeling more forgiven than usual was also associated with greater closeness to God at the next assessment when examined separately from repentance. When repentance and absolution were considered together, neither clearly predicted later closeness to God.
These patterns suggest that repentance and feeling forgiven are closely connected and may play different roles in how people experience reconciliation with God. They do not establish that one causes the other or that everyone follows the same sequence.
The findings align with their prior qualitative work and may help clergy, counselors, and other people supporting Christians who struggle to resolve disharmony in their relationship with God after personal wrongdoing.
Reach the participants you need, right when it matters
Whether your research depends on a rare eligibility profile, a tight recruitment window, or a multi-wave design that demands high retention, Prolific's Managed Services can help. Talk to our team to discuss your research requirements. Or get started with longitudinal projects and run your study on Prolific today.
