Amazon Turk for gaining participants in survey research

[Mole]

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Has anyone ever used of Amazon Turk? https://www.mturk.com:443/mturk/welcome

It is apparently linked to Amazon.com that hosts "tasks" for users to complete in return for money and/or prizes linked to their Amazon account.

My advisor suggested it to host a questionnaire for my research project. Apparently my advisor knows someone who got 600 responses!

Something about the site seems a bit sketchy to me.

Any reviews out there?

Thanks!

 

[cara susanna]

I know professors who've used it and they love it. It's a great way to get a sample that you can generalize to more than just using undergrads. Also, I've heard that you can get data collection done in one week.

 

[ssodium]

I also know a few labs that use it and they all love it! I heard it's also good for doing cross-cultural comparisons because you can recruit participants from other countries. One downside is that you have to go through rigorous data cleaning after (more than usual).

 

[thewesternsky]

I've used it with good results. ssodium is right about the data cleaning, but you can definitely recruit a large number of participants in a short amount of time.

 

[PerhapsMaybeOk]

One has to ponder the sample's characteristics when they are filling out some of these things for .005 cents each.