ArticleBehavior research methods2023
Evaluating CloudResearch's Approved Group as a solution for problematic data quality on MTurk.
Article in Behavior research methods, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 papers.
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Who cites it
49 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Fast efficient coding and sensory adaptation in gain-adaptive recurrent networks.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Partisan Prejudice: The Role of Beliefs About the Unchanging Nature of Ideology and Partisans.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2026Article
- Comparing age differences in cognition, personality, and political orientation across six online recruitment platforms.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- How meaningfulness and initial learning degree influence associative storage and retrieval processes: A multinomial processing tree and power function analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Stop Right Now, Thank You Very Much: Psychopathic Traits, Externalizing Dimensions, and Interpersonal Proximity.Journal of personality disorders · 2026Article
- Article
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- Cooperative extension and academic departments partnership: Translating nutrition science messages to diverse audiences.Journal of clinical and translational science · 2026Article
- Internal focalization influences real-life empathy: a literary contribution to wellbeing.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Commentary on Eskreis-Winkler and Fishbach (2019): A Tendency to Answer Consistently Can Generate Apparent Failures to Learn From Failure.Psychological science · 2025Article
- Revealing Key Dimensions Underlying the Recognition of Dynamic Human Actions.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Bayesian estimation yields anti-Weber variability.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- 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
- Profitable third-party punishment destabilizes cooperation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Maintaining data quality on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has always been a concern for researchers. These concerns have grown recently due to the bot crisis of 2018 and observations that past safeguards of data quality (e.g., approval ratings of 95%) no longer work. To address data quality concerns, CloudResearch, a third-party website that interfaces with MTurk, has assessed ~165,000 MTurkers and categorized them into those that provide high- (~100,000, Approved) and low- (~65,000, Blocked) quality data. Here, we examined the predictive validity of CloudResearch's vetting. In a pre-registered study, participants (N = 900) from the Approved and Blocked groups, along with a Standard MTurk sample (95% HIT acceptance ratio, 100+ completed HITs), completed an array of data-quality measures. Across several indices, Approved participants (i) identified the content of images more accurately, (ii) answered more reading comprehension questions correctly, (iii) responded to reversed coded items more consistently, (iv) passed a greater number of attention checks, (v) self-reported less cheating and actually left the survey window less often on easily Googleable questions, (vi) replicated classic psychology experimental effects more reliably, and (vii) answered AI-stumping questions more accurately than Blocked participants, who performed at chance on multiple outcomes. Data quality of the Standard sample was generally in between the Approved and Blocked groups. We discuss how MTurk's Approval Rating system is no longer an effective data-quality control, and we discuss the advantages afforded by using the Approved group for scientific studies on MTurk.
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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.