Recruiting older adult participants through crowdsourcing platforms: Mechanical Turk versus Prolific Academic

• Published in: AMIA ... Annual Symposium proceedings Vol. 2020; pp. 1230 - 1238
• Main Authors: Turner, Anne M, Engelsma, Thomas, Taylor, Jean O, Sharma, Rashmi K, Demiris, George
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Medical Informatics Association 2020
• ISSN: 1942-597X; 1559-4076

Recruiting older adults (OA) into research is challenging. To assess the feasibility of using two crowdsourcing platforms, Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and Prolific Academic (ProA), as efficient and low-cost venues for recruiting survey participants aged 65 and older. We developed an online survey to investigate and compare the demographics, technology use, and motivations for research participation of OA on MTurk and ProA. Qualitative responses, response time, word count, and recruitment costs were analyzed. We recruited 97 OA survey participants on both MTurk and ProA. Participants were similar in terms ofdemographics, technology usage, and motivations for participation (topic interest and payment). Both crowdsourcing platforms are useful for rapid and low-cost recruitment of OA. The OA recruitment process was more efficient with ProA. Crowdsourcing platforms are potential sources of OA research participants; however, the pool is limited to generally healthy, technologically active, and well-educated older adults.