Policy Pathway User Study

Standalone deployment for the CHI policy-pathway user study. The bundled policy artifacts currently enable the Welfare and Climate domain variants.

Railway variables

• DEEPSEEK_API_KEY: required for stakeholder chat.
• ADMIN_TOKEN: required to view study_admin.html and study_results.html data.
• PROLIFIC_COMPLETION_URL: fallback complete-submission redirect URL supplied by Prolific.
• PROLIFIC_COMPLETION_URL_<DOMAIN>: domain-specific completion URL, such as PROLIFIC_COMPLETION_URL_WELFARE. Baseline, Framework, AB, and BA variants in the same domain share this URL.
• PROLIFIC_SCREENED_OUT_URL: fallback custom-screening redirect URL supplied by Prolific.
• PROLIFIC_SCREENED_OUT_URL_<DOMAIN>: domain-specific custom-screening URL, such as PROLIFIC_SCREENED_OUT_URL_WELFARE. Participants who select None for policy-related research or practice experience are redirected here after their background response is saved.
• DATA_DIR=/data: optional when a Railway Volume is mounted at /data; the app automatically uses Railway's mount-path variable when present.

Attach a Railway Volume at /data before collecting responses. Do not commit the SQLite database. The service listens on internal port 8000; set the Railway domain target port to 8000. The root domain opens the administrator variant manager. Participant-facing links must include a fixed variant query parameter.

Prolific URL pattern

Use one Prolific study per fixed policy pair, condition, and order:

https://YOUR_DOMAIN/study.html?variant=welfare--framework--ab&PROLIFIC_PID={{%PROLIFIC_PID%}}&STUDY_ID={{%STUDY_ID%}}&SESSION_ID={{%SESSION_ID%}}

The server rejects missing or incomplete variants, so a participant cannot receive a random policy pair.

Redirect variables are resolved by domain and then by the common fallback. For example, every Welfare participant uses PROLIFIC_COMPLETION_URL_WELFARE when available, regardless of condition or policy order, and otherwise uses PROLIFIC_COMPLETION_URL.