Amazon Mechanical Turk is a very widely-used tool in business and economics research, but how trustworthy are results from well-published studies that use it?
Analysing the universe of hypotheses tested on the platform and published in leading journals between 2010 and 2020 we find evidence of widespread p-hacking, publication bias and over-reliance on results from plausibly under-powered studies. Even ignoring questions arising from the characteristics and behaviors of study recruits, the conduct of the research community itself erode substantially the credibility of these studies' conclusions.
The extent of the problems vary across the business, economics, management and marketing research fields (with marketing especially afflicted). The problems are not getting better over time and are much more prevalent than in a comparison set of non-online experiments. We explore correlates of increased credibility.
How to attend the seminar
If you wish to attend the seminar or would like to have a bilateral with the speaker, please contact the seminar organizers Anne Boring (boring@ese.eur.nl) or Robert Dur (dur@ese.eur.nl).
