Panels

Panels and Multi-Wave Studies

A common use of MTurk, which is not (easily) possible through the Requester User Interface, is the maintenance of multi-wave studies involving a panel of workers who complete multiple tasks (e.g., survey interviews) over time. MTurkR makes it easy to create, maintain, contact, and pay workers in a panel. An article in Volume 20(2) of The Political Methodologist walks through the basic details of panel maintenance. This page repeats and elaborates that information.

The basic steps in creating a panel are as follows:

1. Create an initial HIT, allowing workers to enter the panel.
2. Approve or reject assignments from the initial HIT. (Workers can still be in a panel even if the initial assignment is rejected. Of course, they may not be interested in doing further work, but a worker must have completed an assignment in order to be contacted by you.)
3. Construct a second wave (or other task). This can be a new HIT, an off-site survey not part of a HIT, or any other task.

• If setting up the second wave as a HIT, you will first need to create a QualificationType to assign to the workers who completed the first wave. This will allow you to restrict access to the second HIT to those who completed the first one. Once you've created the QualificationType and assigned it to the workers, you can then create the HIT using GenerateQualificationRequirement to restrict the HIT to those with the qualification. See "The Negative Qualification Method".

4. Contact the workers you would like to continue in the panel using ContactWorkers.
5. Pay workers for the second wave.

• If using a HIT, this involves the standard assignment approval workflow through MTurkR or the RUI.
• If not using a HIT, this involves using GrantBonus to pay workers for their time. To use GrantBonus, youneed each worker's WorkerId and the AssignmentId for the assignment they completed in (1), above. Without the AssignmentId, it is not possible to grant a bonus.