Trial reportBehavior research methods2022
Quality control questions on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk): A randomized trial of impact on the USAUDIT, PHQ-9, and GAD-7.
Trial report in Behavior research methods, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 122 citations in OpenAlex.
- The effectiveness of warning statements in reducing careless responding in crowdsourced online surveys.Behavior research methods · 2024Trial
- Using Normative Language When Describing Scientific Findings: Randomized Controlled Trial of Effects on Trust and Credibility.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Trial
- Intervening on Trust in Science to Reduce Belief in COVID-19 Misinformation and Increase COVID-19 Preventive Behavioral Intentions: Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Trial
- Planning for New Threats to Online Research Data Validity: The Issue of Computer-Using Agents.Evaluation & the health professions · 2026Article
- Beyond the Label: How Naming and Framing Impact Pediatric Palliative Care Acceptance.Journal of pain and symptom management · 2026Article
- Imposters, Bots, and Other Threats to Data Integrity in Online Research: Scoping Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Best Practices.Online journal of public health informatics · 2025Review
- Stress and episodic future thinking: Effects on temporal window and alcohol demand.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2025Article
- Complex Health Needs in Hurricane-Affected Youth and Their Families: Barriers, Vulnerabilities, and Mental Health Outcomes.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2025Article
- From Privilege to Threat: Unraveling Psychological Pathways to the Manosphere.Archives of sexual behavior · 2025Article
- Impaired Prosodic Processing but Not Hearing Function Is Associated with an Age-Related Reduction in AI Speech Recognition.Audiology research · 2025Article
- Examining the replicability of online experiments selected by a decision market.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Posttraumatic stress disorder in disaster-exposed youth: examining diagnostic concordance and model fit using ICD-11 and DSM-5 criteria.BMC pediatrics · 2025Article
- A national study of substance use: Demonstrated use of recommendations for best practice online data collection.PloS one · 2025Article
- Comparing Health Survey Data Cost and Quality Between Amazon's Mechanical Turk and Ipsos' KnowledgePanel: Observational Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Observational
- The Burden for High-Quality Online Data Collection Lies With Researchers, Not Recruitment Platforms.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024Article
- Improving posttraumatic stress disorder assessment in young children: comparing measures and identifying clinically-relevant symptoms in children ages six and under.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The Cyborg Method: A Method to Identify Fraudulent Responses from Crowdsourced Data.Computers in human behavior · 2024Article
- Interactions between anxiety and impulsive dimensions are differentially associated with experiential avoidance.Journal of mood and anxiety disorders · 2024Article
- Article
- Public Perceptions and Informational Needs Regarding Surgical Residents.Journal of surgical education · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Crowdsourced psychological and other biobehavioral research using platforms like Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is increasingly common - but has proliferated more rapidly than studies to establish data quality best practices. Thus, this study investigated whether outcome scores for three common screening tools would be significantly different among MTurk workers who were subject to different sets of quality control checks. We conducted a single-stage, randomized controlled trial with equal allocation to each of four study arms: Arm 1 (Control Arm), Arm 2 (Bot/VPN Check), Arm 3 (Truthfulness/Attention Check), and Arm 4 (Stringent Arm - All Checks). Data collection was completed in Qualtrics, to which participants were referred from MTurk. Subjects (n = 1100) were recruited on November 20-21, 2020. Eligible workers were required to claim U.S. residency, have a successful task completion rate > 95%, have completed a minimum of 100 tasks, and have completed a maximum of 10,000 tasks. Participants completed the US-Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (USAUDIT), the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), and a screener for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7). We found that differing quality control approaches significantly, meaningfully, and directionally affected outcome scores on each of the screening tools. Most notably, workers in Arm 1 (Control) reported higher scores than those in Arms 3 and 4 for all tools, and a higher score than workers in Arm 2 for the PHQ-9. These data suggest that the use, or lack thereof, of quality control questions in crowdsourced research may substantively affect findings, as might the types of quality control items.
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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.