Crowdsourcing for Online Samples in Counseling Research

Abstract

The use of panels and registration systems for sampling procedures in counseling research offers an innovative method of recruiting participants. Websites such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk, provide quick access to pools of participants for an assortment of research designs. Other sites such as Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey Audience offer tailored and targeted searches and recruitment of specific samples to create online panels. Although these methods of accessing a sample provide ease of access and flexibility of design, there are several cautions to consider when using them for counseling research. In this article, we accomplish several aims: (a) define and describe the concept of crowdsourcing research participation, (b) describe some benefits and cautions about their use, and (c) present different applications of this approach to sampling. We also note the implications of this sampling method for counseling research.

Careless responding in crowdsourced alcohol research: A systematic review and meta-analysis of practices and prevalence.

“…First, crowdsourcing facilitates recruitment of large samples in a relatively short period of time; meaning research can be conducted quickly, efficiently, and responsively in 'real-time' (Wazny, 2017). Indeed, crowdsourcing is able to greatly reduce the 'cost per observation' of studies (Gupta, Rigotti, & Wilson, 2021), as well as expanding opportunities to recruit diverse and representative samples (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010, Ghai, 2021, and traditionally hard to reach populations (Mullen, Fox, Goshorn, & Warraich, 2021). For example, MTurk has more than 500,000 workers from over 190 countries and can provide nationally representative samples (at least for the USA: (Burnham, Le, & Piedmont, 2018)).…”

Social connectedness, mindfulness, and coping as protective factors during the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…We collected data using an online survey administered through a Qualtrics research panel for 20 days in June 2020. Online samples, generally referred to as crowdsourcing, use online data collection services, such as Qualtrics or Amazon Mechanical Turk, to leverage the diversity and collective experience of online communities (Brabham, 2013 ; Mullen et al., 2021 ). A significant advantage of crowdsourcing is quota sampling, a nonprobability sampling method that ensures different strata (e.g., groups) within the sample population are proportional to the population being studied (Sharma, 2017 ).…”

“…Qualtrics, found to be as reliable as traditional recruitment methods (Buhrmester et al., 2011 ), was selected because it is the most demographically representative crowdsourcing platform, reports high compensation rates, and allowed for rapid identification of individuals under the same state‐issued mandate (Heen et al., 2014 ; Mullen et al., 2021 ). The final sample included 1242 participants, 633 (51%) women, with the majority of participants between the age of 35 and 44 ( n = 281, 21.9%), and identifying as White/European American ( n = 761, 61.3%).…”

Post-Traumatic Growth After the Drug-Related Death of a Loved One: Understanding the Influence of Self-Compassion and Hope

“…Following approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at a university in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, we uploaded a demographic questionnaire, informed consent, and our selected measurements for the study onto Qualtrics (2013). In order to recruit participants, we utilized Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), which is a crowdsourcing platform commonly used in counseling research to efficiently collect hard-to-reach participants (Mullen et al, 2021). We chose to use MTurk specifically because of its efficacy in collecting a diverse sample of participants, which can promote generalizability (Landers and Behrend, 2015; Mason and Suri, 2012; Strickland and Stoops, 2019).…”

“…Because this study focused on responses from the MTurk platform, there is limited understanding as to how these results might compare if the surveys were given in-person or through another online questionnaire. However, given that there have been a number of benefits in using samples recruited by MTurk, (Mullen et al, 2021), including for addiction research, (Strickland & Stoops, 2019), these findings are still worth strong consideration for clinical implications and additional research.…”