Using Mechanical Turk to recruit participants for internet intervention research: experience from recruitment for four trials targeting hazardous alcohol consumption

Abstract

BackgroundMechanical Turk (MTurk) is an online portal operated by Amazon where ‘requesters’ (individuals or businesses) can submit jobs for ‘workers.’ MTurk is used extensively by academics as a quick and cheap means of collecting questionnaire data, including information on alcohol consumption, from a diverse sample of participants. We tested the feasibility of recruiting for alcohol Internet intervention trials through MTurk.MethodsParticipants, 18 years or older, who drank at least weekly were recruited for four intervention trials (combined sample size, N = 11,107). The same basic recruitment strategy was employed for each trial – invite participants to complete a survey about alcohol consumption (less than 15 min in length, US$1.50 payment), identify eligible participants who drank in a hazardous fashion, invite those eligible to complete a follow-up survey ($10 payment), randomize participants to be sent or not sent information to access an online intervention for hazardous alcohol use. Procedures where put in place to optimize the chances that participants could only complete the baseline survey once.ResultsThere was a substantially slower rate of recruitment by the fourth trial compared to the earlier trials. Demographic characteristics also varied across trials (age, sex, employment and marital status). Patterns of alcohol consumption, while displaying some differences, did not appear to vary in a linear fashion between trials.ConclusionsIt is possible to recruit large (but not inexhaustible) numbers of people who drink in a hazardous fashion. Issues for online intervention research when employing this sample are discussed.

Relative importance of attribute preferences for radial vs. femoral arterial access: A crowdsourcing study of healthy online‐recruited volunteers

“…Our study further extends findings by Kok et al who assessed attribute preferences amongst patients who had previously underwent an elective coronary procedure . In this study, the majority of participants preferred same‐day discharge to overnight stay.…”

“…Our study further extends findings by Kok et al who assessed attribute preferences amongst patients who had previously underwent an elective coronary procedure. 19 In this study, the majority of participants preferred same-day discharge to overnight stay. Interestingly, Kok et al found that about half of their respondents viewed an overnight stay as more desirable than same-day discharge.…”

“…Our participants were entirely recruited from an online crowdsourcing network hosted by Amazon MTURK. MTURK has been successfully applied as a survey participant‐recruiting tool in both the social sciences and in clinical research . Crowd‐sourcing sites like MTURK can expedite clinical research by facilitating the rapid recruitment of participants .…”

Feasibility, acceptability, and validity of crowdsourcing for collecting longitudinal alcohol use data

“…Third, we used inclusion criteria of 95% approval rates and 100 or more previous mTurk tasks that could have increased the reliability of our group of participants and inflated some findings (e.g., response rates). Restricting participants based on approval rates and/or previous tasks completed is common in mTurk studies (e.g., Cunningham et al, ; Reed et al, ; Strickland & Stoops, ). Previous research has shown that these restrictions can improve data quality (e.g., participants are less likely to demonstrate central‐tendency biases or fail attention checks) as well as result in lower rates of socially desirable responding (Peer, Vosgerau, & Acquisti, ).…”

“…Participants were recruited from mTurk. In order to view the study, participants were required to have an approval rating of 95% or higher on previous tasks, have completed at least 100 mTurk tasks, and currently reside in the United States, consistent with other research (e.g., Cunningham, Godinho, & Kushnir, ; Reed, Becirevic, Atchley, Kaplan, & Liese, ; Strickland & Stoops, ). A short (~1 min) screening survey, including demographic and alcohol use questions, was used to determine study eligibility.…”