Do you get what you pay for? Preventing insufficient effort responding in MTurk and student samples

Previous research has developed multiple indices to detect instances of insufficient effort responding (IER; Huang et al., 2015, 0.1037/a0038510). Although these techniques are largely successful, conflation between effort and insufficient effort leads to unnecessary data removal, thus warranting investigation into IER prevention strategies such as warning statements. For example, Brühlmann et al. (2020, 10.1016/j.metip.2020.100022) reported that close to 60% of participants were flagged for IER on at least one IER detection index. The current study used positive, negative, and no warning statements in two samples (MTurk and university participant pool) to examine their impact on two types of IER. Results do not support the use of warning statements to reduce IER covertly, overtly, or overall. Although slightly more university participants were flagged for IER for two of five IER indices, the remaining three indices did not differ between samples. This finding represents an important contribution to survey research literature by directly comparing samples on a variety of IER indices. Implications for survey research necessitate the examination of additional prevention strategies and sample differences in IER.     

Intentional memory and online data collection: A test of the effects of animacy and threat on episodic memory

As research in the behavioural sciences increasingly relies on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) for recruiting participants, it is an empirical question whether an intentional memory experiment could be conducted online and whether performance of MTurk participants and college students would be comparable. College students and MTurk participants viewed threatening and nonthreatening items that were animate or inanimate and completed a recall test. Recent research indicates that human memory systems evolved to prioritise survival-relevant information, including animacy of items. The results of both studies indicated that participants recalled more animate than inanimate items and recalled more threatening items than nonthreatening items. The results indicate that it is possible to conduct memory experiments online and that results match patterns found in laboratory studies of the animacy effect (Nairne, VanArsdall, Pandeirada, Cogdill, & LeBreton, 2013), but that researchers should include safeguards to ensure the online participants are attending to and following directions.     

Renewal and resurgence phenomena generalize to Amazon's Mechanical Turk

Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing platform that provides researchers with the potential for obtaining behavioral data for very little cost. However, the extent to which the results of common behavioral phenomena found in basic, translational, and applied laboratories may be reproduced (as a first step towards prospective research) via MTurk remains relatively unexplored. We evaluated renewal and resurgence arrangements using MTurk as the subject recruitment platform as a first step to determining the generality of the obtained data. Results suggested that MTurk participants produced renewal and resurgence data similar to those reported in basic, translational, and applied studies.