Using Innovative Samples to Examine Crime and Criminal Justice: Comparing GSS and MTurk

• In Event: Advances in Data Collection

Abstract

Existing literature has examined Amazon’s mechanical turk (MTurk) as a reliable source of data, finding that samples are generally more diverse than the typical American college sample (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011) and are less religious than respondents typically surveyed for the General Social Survey (GSS) (Lewis, Mockabee, Djupe, & Wu, 2015). Despite these differences, the existing literature has found that MTurk is still a reliable and valid source of data for social and behavioral research (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011; Holden, Dennie, & Hicks, 2013; Lewis, Mockabee, Djupe, & Wu, 2015; Mason & Suri, 2012). MTurk serves as an underutilized data collection method in the social sciences that is faster and more feasible than traditional survey methods (Mason & Suri, 2012). However, there has been little published on the utility of MTurk in examining crime and criminal justice related issues. The present study will explore MTurk as a reliable and valid source of data for criminological research by comparing survey items related to crime from the GSS and an MTurk sample for consistency with findings from previous studies.

Authors

• Danielle Fenimore, Texas State University

• Nicole Hendrix, Radford University