ArticleBMC medical research methodology2017
Using Mechanical Turk to recruit participants for internet intervention research: experience from recruitment for four trials targeting hazardous alcohol consumption.
Article in BMC medical research methodology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Pull motivation and well-being as drivers of entrepreneurial success: The moderating role of social capital.PloS one · 2025Article
- Examining the relationship between public stigma, models of addiction, and addictive disorders.Addiction research & theory · 2025Article
- Benzodiazepine Use and Dependence in Relation to Chronic Pain Intensity and Pain Catastrophizing.The journal of pain · 2023Article
- Are you prepared for the next storm? Developing social norms messages to motivate community members to perform disaster risk mitigation behaviors.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2022Article
- Using crowdsourcing to study the differential effects of cross-drug withdrawal for cigarettes and opioids in a behavioral economic demand framework.Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology · 2022Article
- Differential impacts of economic and demographic variables on substance use patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic.The American journal of drug and alcohol abuse · 2022Article
- Public Perception of Ideal Breast Shape.Aesthetic surgery journal. Open forum · 2022Article
- Patterns of Viral Arthropathy and Myalgia Following COVID-19: A Cross-Sectional National Survey.Journal of pain research · 2022Article
- Validation of Ideal Breast Characteristics With Breast Augmentation Patients.Aesthetic surgery journal. Open forum · 2022Article
- Validating Grading of Aesthetic Outcomes of Web Space Reconstruction for Finger Syndactyly: Crowdsourcing Public Perceptions Using Amazon Mechanical Turk.Aesthetic surgery journal. Open forum · 2021Article
- Forgetting faces over a week: investigating self-reported face recognition ability and personality.PeerJ · 2021Article
- The Public's Perception of the Severity and Global Impact at the Start of the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: A Crowdsourcing-Based Cross-Sectional Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Article
- Assessment of Wellbeing and Anxiety-related Disorders in Those Seeking Rhinoplasty: A Crowdsourcing-based Study.Plastic and reconstructive surgery. Global open · 2020Article
- Depression, Environmental Reward, Coping Motives and Alcohol Consumption During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2020Article
- Leveraging crowdsourcing methods to collect qualitative data in addiction science: Narratives of non-medical prescription opioid, heroin, and fentanyl use.The International journal on drug policy · 2020Article
- How one small text change in a study document can impact recruitment rates and follow-up completions.Internet interventions · 2019Article
- Evaluating non-medical prescription opioid demand using commodity purchase tasks: test-retest reliability and incremental validity.Psychopharmacology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
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.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.