Everyone knows things today are different than they were before COVID-19 became a global pandemic. Unfortunately, things won’t return to normal anytime soon. So, in the meantime, parts of society that can continue to function are learning to adapt. This includes research within the social sciences.
Amazon recently announced that Mechanical Turk users can opt into Amazon Web Services (AWS) Billing. What this means is that rather than purchase prepaid HITs on Mechanical Turk, you can have invoices issued at the end of each month, effectively moving MTurk from a pre-payment to post-payment model. CloudResearch is pleased to announce that we have configured our MTurk Toolkit to make this feature functional for researchers who wish to opt into it.
Lately, there’s been considerable debate over the accuracy of presidential polls. While recent polls show Joe Biden ahead, a number of pundits speculate that some Donald Trump supporters may be hesitant to share their true opinions when polled by phone. That hypothesis is gaining traction, leading some to argue that Trump may be leading despite what the latest numbers show. It’s also being fueled by the belief that 2020 will be a repeat of the 2016 election, when Trump polled poorly in advance of the election, but still went on to win the Electoral College vote.
When a research participant submits a survey, you, as the researcher, have a few options. You can accept the submission, in which case the participant gets paid and their approval rating increases. Or, you can reject the submission, in which case the participant is not paid and their reputation suffers (i.e., their approval rating goes down). On Connect, there is also an option to reject participants but still pay them—this is sometimes a requirement by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs).
The coronavirus pandemic has created massive social upheaval. Beyond the health and economic consequences, the day-to-day behaviors of billions of people have been altered. And, the end is currently not in sight.
Of late, researchers have reported a decrease in data quality on Mechanical Turk (MTurk). To combat the issue, we recently developed some data quality solutions, which are described in detail in our previous blog.
