Mechanical Turk Research Articles

Common misperceptions and public knowledge about intrauterine devices among US-based online respondents

ObjectivesMisperceptions about intrauterine devices (IUDs) may dissuade potential users and public beliefs are not well understood. We sought to describe public knowledge of mechanism of action, failure rate, and IUD health risks. Secondary objectives included identifying inaccurate information and information sources about IUDs. Study designWe conducted a convenience-based survey of participants living in the United States 18 years and older using Amazon Mechanical Turk and ResearchMatch. We collected information on demographics, reproductive history, and IUD knowledge. We asked about IUD mechanism of action, failure rate, potential health risks, and information sources. We used multivariable logistic regression to test the association between gender and perceived lower (vs. higher) risks of IUDs. ResultsWe included 1597 individuals with 726 (45.5%) self-reported men and 871 (54.5%) self-reported women. For both hormonal and non-hormonal IUDs, participants most often selected implantation prevention as the primary mechanism of action. In our sample, 55.5% of individuals believed the failure rate was greater than five percent. Weight gain, uterine perforation, and expulsion were cited as health risks likely to occur ≥5% of the time by 42.1%, 34.3%, and 38.4% of participants, respectively. Participants identified healthcare providers as their primary source of contraceptive information. Our multivariable logistic regression analysis revealed women had higher odds of perceiving IUDs as higher risk (aOR=1.35, 95% CI 1.09–1.68) compared to men. ConclusionsIndividuals underestimated IUD effectiveness while overestimating perceived health risks. Our results highlight areas to target education about IUDs to support informed contraceptive decision-making. ImplicationsParticipants misunderstood IUD mechanism of action, underestimated efficacy, and overestimated failure rates and health risks. Providers should begin clinical counseling by assessing baseline knowledge, since mechanism of action, side effect profiles, and concepts like female anatomy should not be assumed to be known.

Remote “Helicopter Bosses”: Employee Perceptions of the Effects of Supervisory Controls and Remote Work During the COVID‐19 Pandemic*

ABSTRACTThe COVID‐19 pandemic precipitated an extensive involuntary shift to remote work and has since dramatically reshaped work and its supervision. We examine how employees' perceived productivity is associated with remote work during the pandemic, how supervisory controls moderate this relationship, and how remote work and perceived productivity impact employee preference for post‐pandemic remote work. We survey 589 workers in June 2020 via Mechanical Turk and find a directionally positive but nonsignificant association between remote work and perceived productivity. Additional analysis, however, indicates an indirect positive effect of remote work on perceived productivity through more hours worked. We further find supervisory monitoring intensity (SMI) is positively associated with perceived productivity, and the association between remote work and perceived productivity is more negative with more intense supervisory monitoring. Outcome‐based evaluation is also positively associated with perceived productivity, but it does not moderate the relationship between remote work and perceived productivity. Supervisor‐based evaluation has no significant association with perceived productivity, nor does it moderate the relationship between remote work and perceived productivity. Overall, our results suggest the main effect of remote work on perceived productivity during the pandemic is weak at best, and SMI is less compatible with remote work supervision than outcome‐based evaluation. Finally, we find increased remote work and perceived productivity improvement during the pandemic are positively associated with preference for post‐pandemic remote work, and we find a marginal positive interaction effect between them. These findings provide empirical evidence of the pandemic's repercussions on the post‐pandemic work environment.

Compensatory strategy use in diverse older adults with subjective cognitive complaints

Objectives The current study aimed to evaluate the relationship between subjective cognitive complaints (SCC) and compensatory strategy (CS) use in a diverse sample of non-Latinx White (NLW), Black, and Latinx American older adults. Method 807 older adults (M age = 65.38, 62.7% female) were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and Qualtrics Panel to complete questionnaires on SCC and CS use. Kruskall-Wallis tests were used to evaluate differences in SCC across groups given non-normal distributions. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to evaluate group differences in CS use. The PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to examine whether demographic factors moderated the relationship between SCC and CS use. Results NLWs reported higher levels of SCC and greater overall use of CS in comparison to Latinx and Black individuals. Several demographic and psychosocial factors including age, ethno-racial group, education, and anxiety level were found to be associated with CS use. Education was found to moderate the association between SCC and CS use. Conclusion Inconsistent with prior studies, our study found that NLWs reported the highest levels of SCC. CS were used across all racial/ethnic groups, but the frequency of CS use may be impacted by education level. While all education groups increased their CS in response to higher levels of SCC, this increase was more substantial for those with lower levels of education. Future work should consider individuals’ cultural and educational background when examining SCC and/or developing CS-based intervention for the aging population.

Development and Validation of the Five-Factor Borderline Inventory-Super Short Form and Screener.

The Five-Factor Borderline Inventory (FFBI) and FFBI-Short Form (FFBI-SF) are 120-item and 48-item measures that assess the underlying maladaptive personality traits of borderline personality disorder (BPD). The purpose of this study was to develop a super short form (FFBI-SSF) and an FFBI-Screener to facilitate the use of dimensional trait measures for BPD. Using item response theory analyses, the 48-item measure was reduced to 22 items using a large undergraduate sample (N = 1300) and then retested using a Mechanical Turk sample (N = 602), demonstrating strong replicability. IRT was again used to further reduce the measure from 22 items to four items to provide a brief screening tool. Correlations of the FFBI-SSF and Screener with measures of BPD-related variables were compared across five samples (N = 919, 204, 580, 281, and 488). Overall, the FFBI-SSF showed similar relations to the FFBI-SF at the full scale and domain-level scales, while the FFBI-screener demonstrated similar relations at the full scale level. This super short form and screener may best be used in large-scale research studies or as part of a screening tool in clinical settings.

The voice quality of pedagogical agent impacts learning and agent perceptions

AbstractBackgroundThe voices virtual on‐screen characters use has been shown to impact learning and perception outcomes. Recent replication research on these voices showed that synthetic voices were not a detriment if produced by a high‐quality engine with clear articulation. The current manuscript examines previous accent research that utilized now outdated engines, to determine if the impact of accents still holds with high‐quality engines and voice actors.ObjectivesTo investigate the impact on learning and perceptions with pedagogical agents speaking in accented voices, synthetic voices, and the interaction between the two using modern voice engines.MethodsThis study is a between‐subjects two (accent) by two (type) factorial design to determine the impact the voice accent, voice type, and the interaction have on learning retention, learning transfer, mental effort efficiency, and perception measures. 197 participants were recruited from the online Amazon's Mechanical Turk with qualifications of 18 years of age, “normal or corrected‐to‐normal hearing”, and located with the continental United States of America.Results and ConclusionsThere were no significant differences between the accented conditions or interaction effects, deviating from previous research that showed impact of accents on learning. The synthetic condition had significantly lower knowledge retention, knowledge transfer, mental effort efficiency, and perception measures than the human professional. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering voice quality when designing pedagogical agents. Previous research showed synthetic voices perform as well as the average voice, and this research continues the narrative of voice quality by showing professional recordings outperform modern synthetic engines.

Vested Interest Theory as a Framework for Understanding Anthropogenic Climate Change Risk Perceptions

ABSTRACT Climate change due to anthropogenic activities is contributing to the systematic warming of Earth. A warming planet represents an existential threat to humanity, contributing to the increased frequency and magnitude of multiple natural hazards. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) notes that time is running out to create meaningful change to avert climate-related consequences. This research posits Vested Interest Theory (VIT) as a potentially useful framework for assessing attitudes and risk perceptions associated with anthropogenic climate change (ACC). Vested Interest Theory mediates the attitude-behavior relationship where highly vested individuals are more likely to behave in attitudinally-consistent ways. Vestedness is conceptualized as five distinct and observable variables: salience, certainty, immediacy, self-efficacy, and response-efficacy. To test VIT’s efficacy in this context, a survey was conducted with participants crowdsourced from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform (N = 1053). Participants responded to items designed to measure their individual vestedness in ACC consequences, risk perceptions, and behavioral intentions. This initial investigation shows that VIT’s constituent variables predict consequential amounts of observed variance in critical variables including risk perception, perceived event severity, and behavioral intentions related to ACC hazard mitigation. The results support the use of VIT as a framework for understanding attitude-behavior relationships associated with ACC mitigation. Based on these findings, we argue that VIT can also serve as a valuable message design framework to motivate ACC-related mitigation actions.

The Effect of Cyberbullying on Stress and Productivity of Remote Employees During COVID-19

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to enhance our understanding of cyberbullying from a conservation of resources perspective with the goal of advancing theory and providing practitioners with information aimed at well-being interventions. We examined perceived stress as an explanatory mechanism of the relationship between cyberbullying and work productivity in remote workers. Information exchange frequency and quality were considered as potential resources that were hypothesized to mitigate this indirect effect. A sample of 269 adults in the United States who were working remotely as a result of COVID-19 were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The results of this time-lagged study indicated that cyberbullying did indeed exhibit an indirect effect on productivity via stress. However, contrary to expectations, this indirect effect was stronger for those with higher information exchange quality rather than lower information exchange quality. The indirect effect was unaffected by information exchange frequency. We encourage future scholars to dig deeper into when resources may be detrimental to employee well-being. We also encourage practitioners to consider ways to reduce both cyberbullying and worker stress with interventions such as technology etiquette training and careful planning of information exchange.

Emotion dysregulation and family functioning moderate family caregiving burden during the pandemic.

Since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, additional risk factors affecting family caregivers' mental health have arisen. Therefore, personal stress coping strategies and family dynamics became important factors in reducing the impact of the pandemic on family caregivers' mental health. The present research aimed to estimate the association between COVID-19 stressors and family caregiving burden. Moreover, moderating effects of emotion dysregulation and family functioning on this association were investigated. This study analyzed data collected in April 2021 from 154 family caregivers (Mage=38.79, SDage=9.36, range=22-64) recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The impact of COVID-19 stressors on family caregiving burden was tested, and moderating impacts of emotion dysregulation and family functioning were also investigated. Both COVID-19 stress exposure and stress appraisal were positively associated with family caregiving burden. Emotion dysregulation and problematic family functioning were also positively associated with family caregiving burden. A significant moderating effect of emotion dysregulation was found, such that family caregivers with higher emotion dysregulation were likely to feel more caregiving burden when they experienced more COVID-19 stressors. The current research highlighted the role of emotion regulation in reducing the negative impact of COVID-19 stressors on family caregiving burden. The research also emphasizes the need for intervention programs to improve emotion regulation strategies to decrease family caregiving burden during the pandemic.

Consumer Intention Toward Participation in Proximity Marketing

This study investigates the factors affecting consumers' attitudes toward proximity marketing and their participation intention. An online survey was conducted in the USA to test the research hypotheses, and the data were collected through crowdsourcing via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The collected data (n=301) were analyzed using the Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The results revealed that consumers' privacy concerns, level of knowledge, perceived benefits, and trust have a significant positive effect on their attitude toward proximity marketing, and the results also verified that consumers' attitude has a significant positive effect on their intention to participate in proximity marketing. This study is a pioneering work as it is one of the few research papers examining consumers' intention to participate in proximity marketing by measuring the effect of several variables that were not investigated adequately in the proximity marketing context.

The importance of developmental assets in HIV prevention behaviors among young black men who have sex with men (MSM)

Developmental assets are critical to the health and wellbeing of youth. The current study examines the influence of developmental assets on PrEP use and HIV testing among YBMSM ages 18–24. Using a cross-sectional survey of YBMSM (N = 225), this study explored the role of external (e.g., family support, other adult support) and internal (e.g., personal responsibility) assets in explaining HIV prevention behaviors. Participants were recruited from Mechanical Turk (M-Turk) internet-based platform, social media sites, and community-based organizations. A path analysis was conducted to investigate the direct/indirect effects of internal and external assets on PrEP use and HIV testing. Family support (β = 0.40, p < 0.001) and other adult support (β = 0.22, p = 0.004) were both associated with personal responsibility. Personal Responsibility (β = 0.15, p = 0.03) and positive identity (β = 0.28, p < 0.001) were both associated with an increase HIV testing. Personal responsibility was positively associated with increased PrEP use (β = 0.30, p < 0.001). Our study results indicated that external assets play a role in helping to build internal assets that support increased HIV testing and PrEP use among YBMSM. Our findings suggest the need for strength-based interventions that help YBMSM build assets and increase HIV prevention behaviors.

Fostering human learning in sequential decision-making: Understanding the role of evaluative feedback.

Cognitive rehabilitation, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skill acquisition, and coaching games such as chess often require tutoring decision-making strategies. The advancement of AI-driven tutoring systems for facilitating human learning requires an understanding of the impact of evaluative feedback on human decision-making and skill development. To this end, we conduct human experiments using Amazon Mechanical Turk to study the influence of evaluative feedback on human decision-making in sequential tasks. In these experiments, participants solve the Tower of Hanoi puzzle and receive AI-generated feedback while solving it. We examine how this feedback affects their learning and skill transfer to related tasks. Additionally, treating humans as noisy optimal agents, we employ maximum entropy inverse reinforcement learning to analyze the effect of feedback on the implicit human reward structure that guides their decision making. Lastly, we explore various computational models to understand how people incorporate evaluative feedback into their decision-making processes. Our findings underscore that humans perceive evaluative feedback as indicative of their long-term strategic success, thus aiding in skill acquisition and transfer in sequential decision-making tasks. Moreover, we demonstrate that evaluative feedback fosters a more structured and organized learning experience compared to learning without feedback. Furthermore, our results indicate that providing intermediate goals alone does not significantly enhance human learning outcomes.

Crowdsourcing Opinions and Awareness of Upper Extremity Transplantation in the United States.

Introduction As of 2008, the United States had 41,000 people living with upper extremity amputation. This number is projected to reach300,000 by 2050. Human upper extremity transplantation (HUET) may become a more common treatment option with the potential to significantly improve the quality of life for certain amputees. Awareness and opinions regarding HUETamong Americans, particularly in Veterans/Service Members (VSM) affiliates, are largely unknown. Materials and methods We administered a survey on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers. Eligible participants were US citizens aged ≥18 years; MTurk worker selection targeted workers who self-reported being a VSM. We used descriptive statistics to summarize study findings and Fisher's exact and Wilcoxon's rank-sum tests for between-group comparisons. Results The survey was completed by 764 individuals, 604 (79.1%) of whom reported being aware of HUET. Among those familiar versus unfamiliar, a significantly higher proportion were aged ≤35 years (n=385, 64.0% vs. n=86, 53.7%; p=0.017), employed (n=523, 86.6% vs. n=114, 71.3%; p<0.001), and aware of their religion's stance on organ/tissue donation (n=341, 54.5% vs. n=62, 38.8%; p<0.001). Amputees and/or respondents related to an amputee were more likely to be aware of HUET than individuals who were amputation naive (n=211, 90.6% vs. n=393, 74.0%, respectively; p<0.001), as were individuals with a personal or familial military affiliation (n=286, 85.4% with vs. n=318, 74.1% with no affiliation; p<0.001). The most reported HUET information sources were digital media (n=157, 31.2%) and internet (n=137, 27.2%). Conclusions Our survey of MTurk workers found greater awareness of HUET among individuals with a VSM or amputee connection. Our additional findings that the internet and academic sources, such as journals or reputable medical publications, were respondents' preferred sources of HUET information emphasize the importance of vascularized composite allotransplantation (VCA) centers' involvement in creating accurate and accessible content to help educate the public about this treatment.

Engaging in co-creation experiences: the role of affective image and satisfaction

PurposeThis study proposes a conceptual model and aims (1) to understand how co-creation experience influences guest engagement, (2) to analyse the effect of satisfaction and affective image between co-creation experience and guest engagement, and (3) to analyse the effect of guest engagement on behavioural intentions.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire-based online survey was conducted targeting U.S.-based hotel customers. Developed on Qualtrics and distributed via Mechanical Turk, the survey garnered 465 useable responses from individuals who had visited international chain hotels within the last year. Data analysis was performed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) in IBM SPSS Amos.FindingsThe findings revealed significant direct effects of co-creation experience on affective image and guest satisfaction, with guest satisfaction notably influencing guest engagement, and guest engagement directly influencing behavioural intention. However, both co-creation experience and affective image showed minimal direct impact on guest engagement. The study also highlighted the importance of indirect effects and total effects in understanding the dynamics between the constructs analysed.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings revealed significant direct effects of co-creation experience on affective image, with affective image notably influencing guest engagement, and guest engagement directly influencing behavioural intention. Although satisfaction had direct effects on guest engagement, co-creation experience showed minimal direct impact on guest satisfaction and on guest engagement.Practical implicationsThis study advises managers to use co-creation primarily to enrich guest experiences and establish emotional connections rather than as a tool for directly enhancing engagement. It recommends that managers invest in strategies to enhance guest engagement beyond co-creation given the direct link between guest engagement and behavioural intentions, and the minimal direct impact between co-creation, guest engagement and satisfaction.Originality/valueThis study demonstrates that affective image is a pivotal mediator between co-creation experience and guest engagement. The findings provide valuable implications for hospitality practitioners in designing and managing co-creation experiences, emphasizing the importance of fostering a positive affective image in the value co-creation process to attain positive behavioural outcomes.

Factors influencing green energy consumer behaviour in Australia

This research explores the factors influencing green energy consumer behaviour in Australia by examining Australian consumers' attitudes towards green energy from the Green Perceived Value (GPV) perspective, which integrates functional, emotional, conditional, and social dimensions. The data was collected through a survey of 380 participants on Amazon Mechanical Turk. This study employs factor analysis and structural equation modelling to report positive attitudes towards green energy. The positive perception is notably centred on its practical benefits, superior quality, and environmental advantages. These findings suggest that marketing strategies should highlight green energy's functional and environmental benefits to encourage consumer adoption. The study underscores the necessity of targeted educational campaigns aimed at younger demographics through digital media and the importance of emphasising green energy's economic and environmental benefits. Also, it recommends leveraging social and emotional value messaging and fostering community engagement to enhance the attractiveness of green energy solutions. Contributing to the discourse on green energy adoption in Australia, this research advocates for inclusive policies that ensure the accessibility and affordability of green energy for a diverse demographic spectrum. It calls for expanded research to further explore the GPV dimensions and include potential consumers in different cultural contexts. It offers a comprehensive framework to support strategies for increasing green energy adoption that are aligned with sustainability objectives.

The gendered plate: gender-specific food perceptions and sport sponsorship

PurposeThis study aimed to investigate the relationship between food sponsorships and gender stereotypes, focusing on how patriarchal beliefs influence consumers’ purchase intentions in sports.Design/methodology/approachThe research comprised two studies. In Study 1, n = 161 participants participated via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform. Study 2 involved n = 250 participants who completed a cross-sectional and self-administered survey.FindingsStudy 1 indicated an apparent gender-based categorization of certain foods and beverages: beer and red meat were predominantly perceived as masculine, while yogurt, salads, and wine were seen as feminine. Further, brands like Budweiser and Red Bull were mainly seen as masculine, while Chobani and Smoothie King were perceived as feminine. Moreover, findings indicate that foods, especially those rich in protein or linked to BBQ and spicy tastes, are considered more masculine by men than women in sports settings. Further, Study 2 findings unveiled a significant relationship between patriarchal beliefs and both attitudes (ß = 0.327, p < 0.01) and subjective norms (ß = 0.525, p < 0.01) towards masculine brands.Originality/valueThe two studies’ results underscore the profound impact of gender stereotypes shaping sports fans’ perceptions of food items and the brands sponsoring them. This inquiry significantly augments the current understanding of the nuanced interrelation between the paradigms of social role theory and the theory of planned behavior, particularly within the ambit of sports-related sponsorship by food and beverage brands and its consequent influence on consumer purchasing inclinations.

Optimizing Word Embeddings for Patient Portal Message Datasets with a Small Number of Samples.

Patient portal messages often relate to specific clinical phenomena (e.g., patients undergoing treatment for breast cancer) and, as a result, have received increasing attention in biomedical research. These messages require natural language processing and, while word embedding models, such as word2vec, have the potential to extract meaningful signals from text, they are not readily applicable to patient portal messages. This is because embedding models typically require millions of training samples to sufficiently represent semantics, while the volume of patient portal messages associated with a particular clinical phenomenon is often relatively small. We introduce a novel adaptation of the word2vec model, PK-word2vec, for small-scale messages. PK-word2vec incorporates the most similar terms for medical words (including problems, treatments, and tests) and non-medical words from two pre-trained embedding models as prior knowledge to improve the training process. We applied PK-word2vec on patient portal messages in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center electric health record system sent by patients diagnosed with breast cancer from December 2004 to November 2017. We evaluated the model through a set of 1000 tasks, each of which compared the relevance of a given word to a group of the five most similar words generated by PK-word2vec and a group of the five most similar words generated by the standard word2vec model. We recruited 200 Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) workers and 7 medical students to perform the tasks. The dataset was composed of 1,389 patient records and included 137,554 messages with 10,683 unique words. Prior knowledge was available for 7,981 non-medical and 1,116 medical words. In over 90% of the tasks, both reviewers indicated PK-word2vec generated more similar words than standard word2vec (p=0.01).The difference in the evaluation by AMT workers versus medical students was negligible for all comparisons of tasks' choices between the two groups of reviewers (p = 0.774 under a paired t-test). PK-word2vec can effectively learn word representations from a small message corpus, marking a significant advancement in processing patient portal messages.

Accuracy, readability, and understandability of large language models for prostate cancer information to the public.

Generative Pretrained Model (GPT) chatbots have gained popularity since the public release of ChatGPT. Studies have evaluated the ability of different GPT models to provide information about medical conditions. To date, no study has assessed the quality of ChatGPT outputs to prostate cancer related questions from both the physician and public perspective while optimizing outputs for patient consumption. Nine prostate cancer-related questions, identified through Google Trends (Global), were categorized into diagnosis, treatment, and postoperative follow-up. These questions were processed using ChatGPT 3.5, and the responses were recorded. Subsequently, these responses were re-inputted into ChatGPT to create simplified summaries understandable at a sixth-grade level. Readability of both the original ChatGPT responses and the layperson summaries was evaluated using validated readability tools. A survey was conducted among urology providers (urologists and urologists in training) to rate the original ChatGPT responses for accuracy, completeness, and clarity using a 5-point Likert scale. Furthermore, two independent reviewers evaluated the layperson summaries on correctness trifecta: accuracy, completeness, and decision-making sufficiency. Public assessment of the simplified summaries' clarity and understandability was carried out through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants rated the clarity and demonstrated their understanding through a multiple-choice question. GPT-generated output was deemed correct by 71.7% to 94.3% of raters (36 urologists, 17 urology residents) across 9 scenarios. GPT-generated simplified layperson summaries of this output was rated as accurate in 8 of 9 (88.9%) scenarios and sufficient for a patient to make a decision in 8 of 9 (88.9%) scenarios. Mean readability of layperson summaries was higher than original GPT outputs ([original ChatGPT v. simplified ChatGPT, mean (SD), p-value] Flesch Reading Ease: 36.5(9.1) v. 70.2(11.2), <0.0001; Gunning Fog: 15.8(1.7) v. 9.5(2.0), p < 0.0001; Flesch Grade Level: 12.8(1.2) v. 7.4(1.7), p < 0.0001; Coleman Liau: 13.7(2.1) v. 8.6(2.4), 0.0002; Smog index: 11.8(1.2) v. 6.7(1.8), <0.0001; Automated Readability Index: 13.1(1.4) v. 7.5(2.1), p < 0.0001). MTurk workers (n = 514) rated the layperson summaries as correct (89.5-95.7%) and correctly understood the content (63.0-87.4%). GPT shows promise for correct patient education for prostate cancer-related contents, but the technology is not designed for delivering patients information. Prompting the model to respond with accuracy, completeness, clarity and readability may enhance its utility when used for GPT-powered medical chatbots.

Influence of Daily Coping on Psychological Stress: A Multilevel Modeling Approach

The current study examined the association between approach and avoidance coping strategies and psychological stress during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Participants were 62 adults who were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Data collection lasted for 29 d in May 2020. Multilevel modeling revealed no significant association between approach coping strategies and psychological stress among individuals, and engaging in approach coping more than the usual days was also not associated with lower stress. Regarding avoidance coping strategies, they were positively associated with psychological stress among individuals, and when individuals engaged in avoidance coping more than usual, those individuals were more likely to experience psychological stress. Interestingly, the strength of the association between approach coping strategies and psychological stress was dependent on the levels of psychological stress, where the strength became weaker as the level of stress increased. Similarly, the strength of the association between avoidance coping and stress was also dependent on stress at the beginning of the study, where the strength of the association became stronger as the level of stress increased. Current results raise the importance of being mindful of an individual’s psychological stress as the effectiveness of coping strategies may differ based on one’s level of stress.

The Impact of Online Reviews on Consumers’ Purchase Intentions: Examining the Social Influence of Online Reviews, Group Similarity, and Self-Construal

Consumers often rely on evaluations such as online reviews shared by other consumers when making purchasing decisions. Online reviews have emerged as a crucial marketing tool that offers a distinct advantage over traditional methods by fostering trust among consumers. Previous studies have identified group similarity between consumers and reviewers as a key variable with a potential impact on consumer responses and purchase intention. However, the results remain inconclusive. In this study, we identify self-construal and group similarity as key factors in the influence of online review ratings on consumers’ purchase intentions. We further investigate the role of consumers’ self-construal in shaping consumers’ perceptions of online reviews in terms of belongingness and diagnosticity. To test the hypothesis, we conducted a 2 (online review rating) × 2 (group similarity) × 2 (self-construal) ANOVA on 276 subjects collected through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), and contrast analysis and PROCESS macro model 12 were used for the interaction effect analysis and moderated mediation analysis. Our findings reveal that consumers with an interdependent self-construal are sensitive to both review ratings and group similarity with regards to their purchase intentions. They demonstrate a positive purchase intention when both group similarity and online review ratings are high. However, their purchase intention is not influenced by review ratings when group similarity is low. Conversely, consumers with an independent self-construal exhibit a more positive purchase intention when the online review rating is high, irrespective of group similarity. Additionally, our study highlights the mediating roles of perceived diagnosticity and belongingness in the relationship between online review ratings, group similarity, self-construal, and purchase intentions. Results show significant indirect effects for perceived diagnosticity and belongingness, meaning that the impact of online review ratings on purchase intention is mediated by these two variables. The outcomes of our research offer theoretical and practical implications concerning online reviews and suggest new avenues for future research in the area of online consumer behavior.

Psychometric benefits of self-chosen rating scales over given rating scales

Rating scales are susceptible to response styles that undermine the scale quality. Optimizing a rating scale can tailor it to individuals’ cognitive abilities, thereby preventing the occurrence of response styles related to a suboptimal response format. However, the discrimination ability of individuals in a sample may vary, suggesting that different rating scales may be appropriate for different individuals. This study aims to examine (1) whether response styles can be avoided when individuals are allowed to choose a rating scale and (2) whether the psychometric properties of self-chosen rating scales improve compared to given rating scales. To address these objectives, data from the flourishing scale were used as an illustrative example. MTurk workers from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform (N = 7042) completed an eight-item flourishing scale twice: (1) using a randomly assigned four-, six-, or 11-point rating scale, and (2) using a self-chosen rating scale. Applying the restrictive mixed generalized partial credit model (rmGPCM) allowed examination of category use across the conditions. Correlations with external variables were calculated to assess the effects of the rating scales on criterion validity. The results revealed consistent use of self-chosen rating scales, with approximately equal proportions of the three response styles. Ordinary response behavior was observed in 55–58% of individuals, which was an increase of 12–15% compared to assigned rating scales. The self-chosen rating scales also exhibited superior psychometric properties. The implications of these findings are discussed.