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Article 1: Klein, K., & Cheuvront, B. (1990). The subject-experimenter contract: A reexamination of subject pool contamination. Teaching of Psychology, 17(3), 166-169.

Summary: The authors conducted three experiments to test whether instructions about confidentiality increase participant’s disclosure. Across the three studies, disclosure of confidentiality increased as requirements of confidentiality increased, suggesting that disclosure of confidential details and information may be a problem for subject pools.

Learning Objectives: Subject Pools: Characteristics, Software, Practical Issues

Questions to Consider

1. What is confidentiality in a study? Why is it important for the researchers and the participants?
2. What did the researchers find happens with disclosure of confidential information across the three studies?
3. What do their results suggest about confidentiality in research studies?
    

Article 2: Brickman Bhutta, C. (2012). Not by the book: Facebook as a sampling frame. Sociological Methods and Research, 41(1), 57-88.

Summary: The author examines the usefulness of snowball samples to reach subpopulations through social networking sites. The author finds that this sampling method while disproportionately female, young, educated, and actively religious, produced similar results to national polls.

Learning Objectives: Types of Sampling

Questions to Consider

1. What is a snowball sample? How is it different than other sampling types?
2. What concerns about representativeness exist using a snowball sample?
3. How can a researcher effectively use snowball samples in social media sites?
    

Article 3: Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., Gosling, S. D. (2011). Amazon’s mechanical turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 3-5.

Summary: The authors discuss the utility and differences between a traditional participant pool and Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Their analysis found that MTurk participants were slightly more diverse than the typical college sample, that participation is affected by the length of the task and compensation, that data quality is not undermined by compensation rates, and that data appears to be as reliable as that obtained via traditional samples.

Learning Objectives: Amazon Mechanical Turk and Online Paid Panels

Questions to Consider

1. What are MTurk and other online participant recruitment sites? How are they different than the normal college sample?
2. What advantages do these recruitment sites offer? What are some disadvantages?
3. How should these sites be used in psychological science?