ArticleRoyal Society open science2025
Assessing the quality and reliability of the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) data in 2024.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A systematic review of delay discounting among workers: framing effects, resource availability, and health.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Assessing the quality and reliability of the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) data in 2024.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has been one of the most popular platforms for online research in psychology and the social sciences in general. While concerns about MTurk data quality have been raised, the platform continues to be widely used. The question is whether the MTurk platform is suitable for research and, if so, whether it is used optimally. We conducted a systematic investigation of MTurk data quality and reliability, including main and replication experiments, with more than 1300 participants subdivided into three cohorts: (i) workers (i.e. participants on the MTurk platform) with master requirement (i.e. high-performing workers selected by MTurk), (ii) workers without master requirement, and (iii) workers without master requirement, but with a 95% or above approval rate. We found that master workers almost never missed attentional checks, exhibited high reliability and showed no tendency towards straightlining, therefore, these workers are recommended, especially when the naivety of participants is not a strong prerequisite and no large sample size is required. In contrast, the workers without restrictions or with a 95% or above approval-rate threshold missed many attentional checks, exhibited low reliability and showed a tendency towards straightlining, raising serious concerns about the suitability of these workers for research.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.