MTurk Research: Review and Recommendations

Abstract

The use of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) in management research has increased over 2,117% in recent years, from 6 papers in 2012 to 133 in 2019. Among scholars, though, there is a mixture of excitement about the practical and logistical benefits of using MTurk and skepticism about the validity of the data. Given that the practice is rapidly increasing but scholarly opinions diverge, the Journal of Management commissioned this review and consideration of best practices. We hope the recommendations provided here will serve as a catalyst for more robust, reproducible, and trustworthy MTurk-based research in management and related fields.