Pollsters have known for decades that people are increasingly unwilling to participate in polls and about the problems this can create. In 2016, for example, White voters without a college degree were especially unlikely to participate in polls. The result was that many forecasts seriously underestimated support for President Trump. Even though pollsters thought they fixed this problem heading into 2020, polls in 2020 also underestimated support for President Trump, likely because voters low in social trust avoided the polls. As the last two Presidential cycles show, correcting for one form of non-response bias doesn’t necessarily protect polls from other forms of systematic non-response.
Last month, people in the U.S. marked the one year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic. For most of 2020, circumstances on the ground were changing faster than many forms of data could catch up with, and there was fear this may be true with the demographic composition of people on Amazon Mechanical Turk. So, after one year, we decided to look at whether there were any major changes to the demographics of people on MTurk as a result of the pandemic.
Imagine you’re on the beach with a friend. It’s hot and sunny. After a few hours you’re really thirsty, and just as you’re thinking ‘I could use a drink’ your companion announces they have to go to the bathroom. Before leaving, your friend offers to bring back a soda from the only place nearby that sells drinks—a run-down convenience store. Your friend asks, “How much are you willing to pay for this drink? I’ll only buy it if it’s less than you’re willing to spend.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed nearly everything. An important change for social scientists is that most, if not all, human subjects research has moved online. Given the massive disruptions to society, researchers have asked: who is available and willing to take online studies these days?
Whenever researchers conduct a longitudinal study, one concern takes precedence over almost all others: retaining participants. This is especially true for many studies conducted in the era of COVID-19, as researchers are interested in understanding how people adapt and cope with rapidly changing circumstances.
In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic initiated an unprecedented shift in the American workforce. In a matter of weeks a significant portion of the labor force shifted to working online, a change likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future. Although many of these workers are continuing to perform their pre-pandemic jobs from home, an ever-expanding number are participants in the gig-economy.
