The Demographic and Political Composition of Mechanical Turk Samples
The Demographic and Political Composition of Mechanical Turk Samples
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DOI：
10.1177/2158244016636433
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发表时间：
2016-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
2
通讯作者：
Druckman, James N.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Levay, Kevin E.;Freese, Jeremy;Druckman, James N.
最近调查研究中最值得注意的发展之一是从亚马逊的土耳其机器人（MTurk）中提取的在线便利样本的使用量增加。虽然学者们注意到各种社会和政治差异（例如，年龄，党派）之间的MTurk和人口为基础的样本，这些变化的广度和深度仍然不清楚。我们调查MTurk样本与人口样本的差异程度，以及这些差异的基本性质。我们这样做是通过复制项目从人口为基础的美国国家选举研究（ANES）2012年时间序列研究在一项调查管理的MTurk受访者的样本。除了少数例外，我们不仅发现MTurk的受访者与通过网络完成2012年ANES的受访者存在显着差异，而且在控制易于测量的样本特征时，大多数差异都大大减少。因此，MTurk答卷人似乎与基于人口的答卷人没有不可衡量的根本区别。这表明MTurk数据可以用于推进研究项目，特别是如果研究人员根据需要测量和解释一系列政治和人口变量。
One of the most notable recent developments in survey research is the increased usage of online convenience samples drawn from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). While scholars have noted various social and political differences (e.g., age, partisanship) between MTurk and population-based samples, the breadth and depth of these variations remain unclear. We investigate the extent to which MTurk samples differ from population samples, and the underlying nature of these differences. We do so by replicating items from the population-based American National Election Studies (ANES) 2012 Time Series Study in a survey administered to a sample of MTurk respondents. With few exceptions, we not only find that MTurk respondents differ significantly from respondents completing the 2012 ANES via the Web but also that most differences are reduced considerably when controlling for easily measurable sample features. Thus, MTurk respondents do not appear to differ fundamentally from population-based respondents in unmeasurable ways. This suggests that MTurk data can be used to advance research programs, particularly if researchers measure and account for a range of political and demographic variables as needed.