Evaluating MTurk as a recruitment tool for rural people with disabilities

Recruitment of people with disabilities often occurs through disability organizations, advocacy groups, service providers, and patient registries. Recruitment that relies exclusively on established relationships can produce samples that may miss important information. The MTurk online marketplace offers a convenient option for recruitment.

The paper compares samples recruited through (1) conventional and (2) MTurk methods to better understand how these samples contrast with one another and with national estimates of people with disabilities.

In 2019, researchers recruited 1374 participants through conventional methods and 758 through MTurk to complete the National Survey on Health and Disability (NSHD). We analyzed sample differences between recruitment groups with t-tests, Chi-square, and logistic regression.

With the exception of race/ethnicity, the conventional and MTurk samples were significantly different on several dimensions including age, gender, education level, marital status, children living at home, and sexual orientation. The MTurk sample was overrepresented in lower income brackets. A significantly higher percentage of the conventional sample received SSI, SSDI, or both, compared to the MTurk sample (36.2% vs 12.8%) and had significantly higher rates of insurance coverage. Comparisons with American Community Survey data show that the conventional and MTurk samples aligned more closely with the general population of people with disabilities on different characteristics.

MTurk is a viable complement to conventional recruitment methods, but it should not be a replacement. A combination of strategies builds a more robust dataset that allows for more varied examination of issues relevant to people with disabilities.