Department of Psychology, University of Miami.
J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol. 2022 Jul-Aug;51(4):428-442. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2020.1815205. Epub 2021 Jan 15.
Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a popular data collection tool that is increasingly used to study parents and children. We examined the quality of data obtained via MTurk, the representativeness of parents on MTurk, and whether the wording of MTurk recruitment materials is related to sample characteristics.
Participants were 650 parents with children aged 4 to 17 recruited for two separate studies (64.6% female, 83.8% Caucasian, mean age = 37.6 years). The Mental Health Survey (N = 322) recruitment materials described a study about mental health and the Health Survey (N = 328) materials only referenced health; both surveys restricted participation to parents in the United States (U.S.). Parents completed measures about demographics, mental health service seeking history, and parent and youth psychopathology.
Participants provided reliable responses on study measures, with low rates of missing data. Participants were more female, less racially/ethnically diverse, and more educated than the U.S. population, and also had more children per household. Over 40% of parents and 30% of children had previously received mental health services and many scored in the clinical range on measures of psychopathology. Contrary to hypotheses, mental health help seeking was higher in the Health Survey than the Mental Health survey.
MTurk is a feasible method for child and adolescent clinical psychology research, although participants may not be fully demographically representative of the general population and could possibly be better considered an at-risk or clinical sample than a community sample.
机械 Turk（MTurk）是一种广受欢迎的数据收集工具，越来越多地用于研究父母和子女。我们检查了通过 MTurk 获得的数据的质量、MTurk 上父母的代表性，以及 MTurk 招聘材料的措辞是否与样本特征有关。
共有 650 名有 4 至 17 岁子女的父母参加了两项独立的研究（64.6%为女性，83.8%为白种人，平均年龄为 37.6 岁）。心理健康调查（N=322）的招聘材料描述了一项关于心理健康的研究，健康调查（N=328）的材料仅提到了健康；这两个调查都将参与者限制在美国（美国）的父母。父母完成了关于人口统计学、心理健康服务寻求史以及父母和青少年精神病理学的测量。
参与者对研究测量提供了可靠的反应，数据缺失率很低。参与者的女性比例较高，种族/民族多样性较低，受教育程度较高，每个家庭的孩子也较多。超过 40%的父母和 30%的孩子以前接受过心理健康服务，许多人在精神病理学测量的临床范围内得分。与假设相反，健康调查中的心理健康求助率高于心理健康调查。
MTurk 是儿童和青少年临床心理学研究的一种可行方法，尽管参与者在人口统计学上可能不完全代表一般人群，并且可能更适合被视为高危或临床样本，而不是社区样本。
