 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321300160X?casa_token=jI2BChgu7ggAAAAA:-4S7-fZdImGk74J_dcMoh4Ligrpyzq1UT32vNGALA-loTV-uUURnV9CGRCefvhLEm8ikqqmljA

University of California, Davis

The most common participants in behavioral/psychological studies tend to be American college students, but with the rise of the internet, other forms of sampling have become more common, like using Amazon MTurk.

Separate but equal? A comparison of participants and data gathered viaAmazon’s MTurk, social media, and face-to-face behavioral testing

Separate but equal? A comparison of participants and data gathered viaAmazon’s MTurk, social media, and face-to-face behavioral testing (reference)

MTurk is a platform powered by Amazon that allows ‘employers’ (researchers) to post HITs, or ‘Human Intelligence Tasks’ to complete for payment. MTurk was designed to be a marketplace for people to post simple jobs that cannot be automated, and require human input. These HITs can be surveys, transcriptions, and other functions.  

What is Amazon MTurk?

This study compared three different groups completing the same object selection and categorization task:
1. college undergrads completing the task in a University lab room
- 24 students, 58% female, majority White, received $5 
2. adults recruited through social media completing the task at their own leisure
- 30 adults, 83% female, majority White
3. adults recruited through MTurk completing the task at their own leisure
- 32 adults, 35% female, majority Asian (with an overall more diverse breakup), received $0.50 on Amazon

to compare the difference between tasks completed in-person with the researcher vs. independently online


Separate but Equal Study Methods

When comparing results based on behavioral expectations (that for teaching trials, participants would choose randomly and for non-teaching trials, participants would choose the novel tool), online and in-person outcomes were overall very similar. The main difference between online and in-person participants came in demographic data, where MTurk was more racially diverse and presented diverse socioeconomic groups.

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