Eating disorder related research using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk): Friend or foe?: Commentary on Burnette et al. (2021).

Abstract

Burnette et al. reported a study that they sought to undertake to validate common eating disorder questionnaires in sexual and gender minorities. The researchers took advantage of the online recruitment platform Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Contrary to their expectations, the study proved not feasible due to invalid answering. Thus, Burnette et al. raise concerns against the trustworthiness of crowd-sourced data that may be undermined by financial interests and other kinds of motivations. Our commentary highlights the potential of the COVID-19 pandemic to inflate especially those intentions, which are monetary. Against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, a further problem seems to be that the anonymity of online crowd sourcing platforms might tempt participants to provide inconsistent answers, possibly reflecting tendencies of reactance. The reported pattern of paradoxical responses in Burnette et al.'s work does not reflect malingering; rather we believe that the study might have served some participants as an outlet for negative emotions. We discuss mechanisms of quality control and highlight the lack of interpersonal interaction associated with online data collections.