JCU Psychological & Social Sciences Ratings
JCU Psychological & Social Sciences Wage History
Top Worker Reviews
AfterDarkMark Average Pace
Solve easy rebuses - $5.00
Underpaid
Unrated
Pending
$7.23 / hour
00:41:30 / completion time
Pros
This might be the most important review I've ever posted. Please read.99% approval. ymmv. These usually take less time according to the TV forum.
Please read my cons section or at least the 2nd half or last 3rd. It could make you all some money and is super relevant to the community as a whole.
Cons
The last half of this review matters more.TLDR first part: underpaid, but usually isn't; hopefully, they go back to the original number of trials (40 vs 102 in this one). Check out the 2nd part, please.
ymmv. My time was actually a few minutes faster, but I rushed towards the end because I let the hit sit for 5ish minutes before starting and kind of panicked when time was getting low, so I think this time was fairly accurate, though I may have spent more time than needed per trial, as I expected the hourly to be better. Other people had to return the hit or submit w/ worker ID as code due to running out of time (from TV forum).
Also learned on the TV forum that these usually have 40 trials, but this one had 102, so normally this would take ~61% less time. Kind of a slap in the face to people who have been doing these for a while, if you ask me. I certainly spent more time per trial due to the requester's reputation, and I'm sure others did too. I expected this hit to take 15-25 minutes max.
I messaged the requester asking if this would be the length going forward, as that would probably discourage some good workers from doing them and result in lower data quality, as I'm sure workers will work faster (click no more often on trials) due to this. I certainly would if I do a task from this requester again. I encourage others to do the same (both message the requester and work faster on these in the future, especially if the length is the same).
***THE MOST MPORTANT PART(S): If you notice issues with hits, especially academic surveys (i.e. loaded questions/ biases), it's always good to send a message informing the requester of the problems you noticed (pro tip*). I've received some really good bonuses in the past because the info I passed along about flawed data collection, etc saved them a lot of money.
The worst that can happen is you wasted a small amount of time.
The best that can happen: I actually ended up in a full time, work from home, 6 figure avg job (after raises) off of mturk for the last 4.5 years because I took the time to message ONE requester that was new to the site just before the pandemic. He happened to be the CTO at a company for a public figure that has 9 figures wealth, that was doing some non profit work via mturk, but that led to a job in both the tech and social media realms. And I'll likely use that experience to find another job, so the experience was priceless
***I've also helped reverse thousands of rejections when I used to mturk more, ~5-15 years ago, because I reached out to requesters that were mass or unfairly rejecting workers and let them know that I would contact their review boards for cheating workers and possibly manipulating data. They take that very seriously (both the researchers and the review boards).
DO this too if you are a team player. I care more about the other people that get rejections than myself at this point because I'm doing alright.
***This actually happened with one of the four people mentioned in the recent Atlantic article(s) about cheating in academic research (Dan Ariely) when he started a new account not under his name in 2016 ('IL team' was the account). They were unfairly rejecting people (not me) at first and as soon as I contacted him directly and threatened contacting the review board, I got a response instantly (again, in 2016).
The subject of my original email is literally "Research Fraud?". To be fair, that was more in the context of him cheating workers and data being flawed due to that, but there is a paragraph in my favorite email that reads (and this is coming from me): "As far as I am concerned, every piece of data you've collected and any sort of results or conclusions you have come to can be called into question at this point.", which is what the Atlantic article is pretty much saying.
*I have the email receipts* and plan to contact the writer of the Atlantic article that came out about data manipulation (not that it will likely have much of an impact). There is no doubt in my mind that some of the people in that article were manipulating data for their personal gain. I can't say which of the four. It could be all of them, but I think based on the evidence I've seen, it's probably at least two. And I believe this is a much bigger problem than just the mentioned researchers, so it could be all four. Seemed to be a lot of finger pointing and dead end investigations from universities in order to not taint their images.
*******LASTLY: Does anyone else out there think that despite not having doctorates, etc, we could be doing polling and researching some of this stuff better than some of the people on mturk/ prolific? Especially, with all of the fraud in academia and polling discrepancies that happened this past election cycle...
I certainly do and have 'ideas' to start a company where those of us that have more experience than the people posting surveys could actually be the middle men and women that host these surveys. If you feel this way too, have skills to offer, and would possibly like to be part of something new, please send me a message.
basement Average Pace
Survey on crimes in the media - $3.00
Generous
Unrated
Approved
$21.95 / hour
00:08:12 / completion time
Pros
Very straightforward - bubbles and brief article. Can be completed significantly faster. I let it cook to avoid accusations of rushing.Cons
AfterDarkMark Average Pace
Picture recognition task - $2.00
Generous
Unrated
Approved
$25.26 / hour
00:04:45 / completion time
Pros
ymmv. super simple. I let this sit for a bit before submitting. master's qual.Cons