How to Create a Universal Exclude Worker List

Problem: 

Requesters may observe that some workers, even those with high Approval ratings, may not perform to their expectations on a study. Sometimes this may result in rejecting their work which affects the Worker approval rating. But, often the work is not acceptable for research but is not worthy of rejection, or, it may simply be the policy of the research lab to approve all assignments for IRB or some ethical standard they may follow. 

At this point the researcher may wish to exclude these workers from all future studies. MTurk has an option to Block a Worker (available through the API) but our experience has been that this solution is somewhat draconian and extreme: the effect of a Worker Block can trigger the suspension of the Worker's MTurk account. 

(Source: When I was a newbie Requester in 2012 I blocked some workers who gave me inconsistent and poor responses . I learned the hard way by having my Turkopticon rating suffer and the MTurk Worker discussion groups spread the bad word. I responded to the Worker complaints and Unblocked them to undo the damage to their reputation -- and mine!)

Solution:

Create a Universal Exclude List using the TurkPrime Worker Group feature. This exclude list simply excludes all specified workers in this group from taking a study with this Group Requirement. When you design your studies, just add this exclude group to your Worker Requirements and none of the workers in this exclude group will be qualified to take your study. 

This will achieve your goal of blocking undesired Workers without tarnishing their reputation.

Reusable Include and Exclude Groups

Problem: You are running a longitudinal study and have identified 1000 workers who you want to allow to take your second phase studies. How do you easily group those workers for easy access. 

Or you want to exclude certain workers from taking a number of your studies and wish to group them for easy exclusion in future studies. How can you do that?

Solution: Use the TurkPrime Worker Groups feature available in the Manage Workers menu. This allows you to create reusable worker groups for either inclusion or inclusion in studies. You simply select whether this group is an include or exclude group, give it a clear name and specify the workers in the group. 

Workers will not know why they were targeted for inclusion or exclusion since the MTurk Qualification name used is a random sequence of characters. The TurkPrime Group Name will not be visible to Workers. This is important so that you can run blind studies (i.e. the workers who are specified for inclusion will know they were targeted because they are exhibiting a certain personality, for example)

When you design your study, and specify Worker requirements, add this group to the worker requirements and all workers in that group will be wither included or excluded, as needed.

MTurk Panels on Your Own Requester Account

Studies with Panels  for just $0.15 - 0.75 / complete

Now you can run Mechanical Turk studies using your own Requester account and specify over two dozen demographic traits!.  The traits include gender, ethnicity, age, marital status and sexual orientation. But it does not stop there! The available options also include occupation, medical and health history, cell phone use and much more.

The cost ranges from $0.15 - $0.75 per completed assignment. For example, if you run a study with a panel of 100 White Males 40 and under with a cost of $0.42 / complete the TurkPrime Panel Fee is 0.42 * 100 = $42.00. The panel fee is determined by the incidence rate of your particular panel so that harder to reach demographics cost more...but are capped at a maximum of $0.75 per complete.

In addition, TurkPrime displays the feasibility of the study to run to completion. This is not a guarantee that the workers will take your study. since the MTurk workers, ultimately, decide whether they will accept and complete your study based on many factors including worker payment, requester rating on TurkOpticon and clarity of your study, among others. 

If you want to be certain your study will run to completion we recommend using the TurkPrime Lab Services of either Prime Panels or MTurk Panels where TurkPrime manages all user interaction, reaches out to workers to complete your study and guarantees the study will run to completion.

Studies with MTurk Panels will display the panel traits in the study dashboard along with a tag marking it as a panel study, as shown below.