Crowdsourcing research: Data collection with Amazon's Mechanical Turk

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.