Vanessa Williamson
This article examines the ethics of crowdsourcing in social science research, such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. As these types of research tools become more common in scholarly work, we must acknowledge that many participants are not one-time respondents or even hobbyists. Many people work long hours completing surveys and other tasks for very low wages, relying on those incomes to meet their basic needs. I present my own experience of interviewing Mechanical Turk participants about their sources of income, and I offer recommendations to individual researchers, social science departments, and journal editors regarding the more ethical use of crowdsourcing.
PS: Political Science & Politics / Volume 49 / Issue 01 / January 2016, pp 77-81
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2016