Gabel Taggart

The Opportunities and Limitations of Using Mechanical Turk (MTURK) in Public Administration and Management Scholarship

ABSTRACT Other social science fields are increasingly conducting research using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk)—an online crowdsourcing platform—but how might MTurk be useful to public administration and management research? This article provides an introduction of the platform and considers both the opportunities and limitations for using MTurk in public administration and management scholarship. We find that MTurk might be relevant for examining particular types of research questions. We identify five areas where MTurk data may complement and enhance public administration and management research: (1) exploratory analyses and survey construction; (2) measurement refinement of latent constructs; (3) experiments; (4) longitudinal research and data collection; and (5) collection of data from citizens. The article emphasizes how a key requisite conditions both the applicability of MTurk data and the validity of MTurk-based findings: the researcher must understand the boundaries and potential of the platform, since the issues related to representativeness, participation, and data quality are non-trivial.

The Effect of Online College Attendance on Job Obtainment Through Social Connections

ABSTRACT Attending college online has implications for students’ ability to make social connections and eventually obtain jobs by means of social capital. Previous academic work has tested employer callback rates to fictitious resumes treated by indications of either online or face-to-face college attendance but such methods overlook the networking aspect of job obtainment. This article uses data from a national survey to examine if online college attendance reduces the likelihood that a student uses a social connection to obtain his or her first job out of college. Using an instrumental variables approach to account for the nontraditional characteristics of online students, the author found that attending college exclusively online reduces the likelihood of obtaining a job through social connections, independent of personality and other relevant characteristics of the college setting.