Within the last decade, numerous online populations, such as SurveyMonkeyH and Amazon's Mechanical TurkH (MTurk), have been established allowing researchers to gather data involving diverse populations. These resources offer an alternative to traditional laboratory settings hosted at universities, where many studies utilize students as the available and accessible population. While these online portals do provide new opportunities, they also contain unique advantages and disadvantages. This paper synthesizes the advantages and disadvantages of using online populations to conduct research in the aviation field. Some of the advantages are: easier access to new populations, larger sample sizes, more balanced ratio of genders, lower cost, more timely data collection, reliable data, and anonymity of participants. Some of the disadvantages are: unrepresentative samples, lower response rates, financial motivation issues, limited access to certain portals, limited length of study, non-behavioral data, and lack of follow-up data. In addition, the authors share their personal experiences of using these portals and summarize previous literature researching online populations.
Abstract:As driverless vehicles proliferate, it is possible that this technology will be applied in mass transport vehicles. School buses may be suited for autonomous operations as they follow set routes and schedules. However, a research gap exists in whether or not parents would be willing to have their children ride in autonomously operated school buses. The purpose of this study was to examine parents' willingness to allow their child to ride in an autonomous school bus. Participant gender and nationality were also two independent variables, along with affect measures as a possible mediating variable. The research used a two-study approach. In study one, it was found that participants were less willing to have their child ride in a driverless school bus than a traditional human-operated vehicle. In study two, findings suggest a significant interaction between the type of driver, participant gender, and nationality. In general, American females were less willing than Indian females and overall, Americans were less willing than Indians in the driverless conditions. Affect was found to be a mediating variable, which suggests that emotions were playing a role in the responses of participants. The paper concludes with theoretical contributions, practical applications, and suggestions for future research.
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