The DOI matches its Crossref record; 46 of the 46 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Crowdsourcing research: Data collection with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
Abstract
Researchers in a variety of disciplines use Amazon’s crowdsourcing platform called Mechanical Turk as a way to collect data from a respondent pool that is much more diverse than a typical student sample. The platform also provides cost efficiencies over other online panel services and data can be collected very quickly. However, some researchers have been slower to try the platform, perhaps because of a lack of awareness of its functions or concerns with validity. This article provides an overview of Mechanical Turk as an academic research platform and a critical examination of its strengths and weaknesses for research. Guidelines for collecting data that address issues of validity, reliability, and ethics are presented.
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“Respondents were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), which has been utilized for many social science studies for sample recruitment, and data quality confirmed in previous studies (e.g., Buhrmester et al., 2011; Sheehan, 2018).”
From Fostering Employee Trust via Effective Supervisory Communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Through the Lens of Motivating Language Theory (2022) · cites this paper as Sheehan, 2018
In the citing paper
“Another benefit of using MTurk is that the population is generally more diverse than the typical sample of college students used in social science research [60].”
From Internalized Racism and Mental Health: The Moderating Role of Collective Racial Self-Esteem (2024) · cites this paper as [60]
Citations
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Metadata
- Authors
- Sheehan, K. B.
- Affiliations
- University of Oregon (US)
- Corresponding author
- Sheehan, Kim Bartel
- Venue
- Communication Monographs
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2017-07-04
- Volume
- 85
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 140-156
- ISSN
- 0363-7751 (ISSN-L)
- 1479-5787
- OpenAlex
- W2724582867
- Cited by
- 408
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 33 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 43 · 2022: 78 · 2021: 73 · 2020: 64 · 2019: 49 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 2
- FWCI
- 41.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Communication Monographs (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Mobile Crowdsensing and Crowdsourcing
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Survey Methodology and Nonresponse
- Social Sciences › General Social Sciences › Computational and Text Analysis Methods
- Keywords
- Amazon Mechanical Turk, crowdsourcing, online data collection, validity, reliability statistics, research ethics, cost efficiency, online panels
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