Amazon's Mechanical Turk | RDL Research Database

Abstract

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a relatively new website that contains the major elements required to conduct research: an integrated participant compensation system; a large participant pool; and a streamlined process of study design, participant recruitment, and data collection. In this article, we describe and evaluate the potential contributions of MTurk to psychology and other social sciences. Findings indicate that (a) MTurk participants are slightly more demographically diverse than are standard Internet samples and are significantly more diverse than typical American college samples; (b) participation is affected by compensation rate and task length, but participants can still be recruited rapidly and inexpensively; (c) realistic compensation rates do not affect data quality; and (d) the data obtained are at least as reliable as those obtained via traditional methods. Overall, MTurk can be used to obtain high-quality data inexpensively and rapidly.

Keywords

Amazon rainforestCompensation (psychology)Data collectionTask (project management)Affect (linguistics)The InternetPsychologyQuality (philosophy)Computer scienceData qualityData scienceApplied psychologyWorld Wide WebSocial psychologyStatisticsEngineeringBiologyOperations management

Affiliated Institutions

The University of Texas at Austin US

Related Publications

Should We Trust Web-Based Studies? A Comparative Analysis of Six Preconceptions About Internet Questionnaires.

Samuel D. Gosling , Simine Vazire , Sanjay Srivastava +1 more

The rapid growth of the Internet provides a wealth of new research opportunities for psychologists. Internet data collection methods, with a focus on self-report questionnaires ...

2004 American Psychologist 2911 citations

Multidisciplinary research priorities for the COVID-19 pandemic: a call for action for mental health science

Emily A. Holmes , Rory C. O’Connor , V. Hugh Perry +22 more

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is having a profound effect on all aspects of society, including mental health and physical health. We explore the psychological...

2020 The Lancet Psychiatry 5937 citations

A Tool for Reviewers

Georges Bordage , Addeane S. Caelleigh

Peer review lies at the core of science and academic life. In one of its most pervasive forms, peer review for the scientific literature is the main mechanism that research jour...

2001 Academic Medicine 27 citations

Publication Info

Year: 2011
Type: article
Volume: 6
Issue: 1
Pages: 3-5
Citations: 9954
Access: Closed

External Links

View on DOI.org

Social Impact

Altmetric

Amazon's Mechanical Turk

PlumX Metrics

Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions

Citation Metrics

9954

OpenAlex

Cite This

APA Style

                            
                                    Michael D. Buhrmester, 
                                
                                    Tracy Kwang, 
                                
                                    Samuel D. Gosling
                                
                            (2011). 
                            Amazon's Mechanical Turk. 
                            Perspectives on Psychological Science
                            , 6
                            (1)
                            , 3-5.
                            https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691610393980

Identifiers

DOI: 10.1177/1745691610393980