Cheskie Rosenzweig

Columbia University | CU · Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology

In this study, we examined data quality among Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers based in India, and the effect of monetary compensation on their data quality. Recent studies have shown that work quality is independent of compensation rates, and that compensation primarily affects the quantity but not the quality of work. However, the results o...

This paper introduces Connect, CloudResearch's innovative platform designed to revolutionize the realm of online participant recruitment in social and behavioral science research. Operating as a marketplace, Connect facilitates interactions between researchers and participants, enabling the deployment of surveys and experiments constructed via thir...

Survey respondents who are non-attentive, respond randomly, or misrepresent who they are can impact the outcomes of surveys. Prior findings reported by the CDC have suggested that people engaged in highly dangerous cleaning practices during the COVID-19 pandemic, including ingesting household cleaners such as bleach. In our attempts to replicate th...

Behavioral scientists looking to run online studies are confronted with a bevy of options. Where to recruit participants? Which tools to use for survey creation and study management? How to maintain data quality? In this tutorial, we highlight the unique capabilities of market-research panels and demonstrate how researchers can effectively sample f...

To understand human behavior, social scientists need people and data. In the last decade, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) emerged as a flexible, affordable, and reliable source of human participants and was widely adopted by academics. Yet despite MTurk’s utility, some have questioned whether researchers should continue using the platform on ethic...

Behavioral scientists looking to run online studies are confronted with a bevy of options. Where to recruit participants? Which tools to use for survey creation and study management? How to maintain data quality? In this tutorial, we highlight the unique capabilities of market research panels and demonstrate how researchers can effectively sample f...

Maintaining data quality on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has always been a concern for researchers. These concerns have grown recently due to the bot crisis of 2018 and observations that past safeguards of data quality (e.g., approval ratings of 95%) no longer work. To address data quality concerns, CloudResearch, a third-party website that inter...

People in online studies sometimes misrepresent themselves. Regardless of their motive for doing so, participant misrepresentation threatens the validity of research. Here, we propose and evaluate a way to verify the age of online respondents: a test of era-based knowledge. Across six studies (N = 1543), participants of various ages completed an ag...

In recent years, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has become a pivotal source for participant recruitment in many social-science fields. In the last several years, however, concerns about data quality have arisen. In response, CloudResearch developed an intensive pre-screening procedure to vet the full participant pool available on MTurk and exclud...

This study assesses distress and anxiety symptoms associated with quarantine due to COVID-19 exposure among the first quarantined community in the United States and identifies potential areas of intervention. All participants were directly or peripherally related to "patient 1,"-the first confirmed community-acquired case of COVID-19 in the New Yor...

Maintaining data quality on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has always been a concern for researchers. CloudResearch, a third-party website that interfaces with MTurk, assessed ~100,000 MTurkers and categorized them into those that provide high- (~65,000, Approved) and low-(~35,000, Blocked) quality data. Here, we examined the predictive validity of...

People in online studies sometimes misrepresent themselves. Regardless of their motive for doing so, participant misrepresentation threatens the validity of research. Here, we propose and evaluate a way to verify the age of online respondents: a test of cultural knowledge. Across six studies (N = 1,543), participants of various ages completed an ag...

Online data collection has become indispensable to the social sciences, polling, marketing, and corporate research. However, in recent years, online data collection has been inundated with low quality data. Low quality data threatens the validity of online research and, at times, invalidates entire studies. It is often assumed that random, inconsis...

Despite the absence of many traditional barriers to gender equality, there continues to be a gender pay gap in new job economies (i.e., the “gig economy” or “platform work”). Taking a novel approach to the study of the gender pay gap, we use a completely gender-blind online work setting to examine the effect of a covert source of gender inequality:...

Society is becoming increasingly dependent on survey research. However, surveys can be impacted by participants who are non-attentive, respond randomly to survey questions, and misrepresent who they are and their true attitudes. The impact that such respondents can have on public health research has rarely been systematically examined. In this stud...

The current study examined anxiety and distress among members of the first community to be quarantined in the USA due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to being historically significant, the current sample was unusual in that those quarantined were all members of a Modern Orthodox Jewish community and were connected via religious institutions a...

The current study examined anxiety and distress among members of the first community to be quarantined in the United States due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to being historically significant, the current sample was unusual in that those quarantined were all members of a Modern Orthodox Jewish community and were connected via religious inst...

To understand human behavior, social scientists need people and data. In the last decade, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) emerged as a flexible, affordable, and reliable source of human participants and was widely adopted by academics. Yet despite MTurk’s utility, some have questioned whether researchers should continue using the platform on ethic...

The current study assesses anxiety and predictors of anxiety associated with quarantine due to COVID-19 exposure among the first community to be quarantined in the US. Further, potential areas of intervention are identified in order to reduce distress and minimize psychological and physiological sequelae associated with heightened and sustained anx...

Studies of the gender pay gap are seldom able to simultaneously account for the range of alternative putative mechanisms underlying it. Using CloudResearch, an online microtask platform connecting employers to workers who perform research-related tasks, we examine whether gender pay discrepancies are still evident in a labor market characterized by...

Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a common source of research participants within the academic community. Despite MTurk’s utility and benefits over traditional subject pools some researchers have questioned whether it is sustainable. Specifically, some have asked whether MTurk workers are too familiar with manipulations and measures common in the social s...

Studies of the gender wage gap are seldom able to simultaneously account for the range of alternative putative mechanisms underlying it. Using TurkPrime, an online microtask platform connecting employers to workers who perform research-related tasks, we examine whether gender wage discrepancies are still evident in a labor market characterized by a...

Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is widely used by behavioral scientists to recruit research participants. MTurk offers advantages over traditional student subject pools, but it also has important limitations. In particular, the MTurk population is small and potentially overused, and some groups of interest to behavioral scientists are underrepresent...

Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a common source of research participants within the academic community. Despite MTurk’s utility and benefits over traditional subject pools some researchers have questioned whether it is sustainable. Specifically, some have asked whether MTurk workers are too familiar with manipulations and measures common in the social s...

We discuss a disconnect between the predictions of Whitehouse's model regarding the accumulative nature of fusion and real-world data regarding the age at which people generally engage in self-sacrifice. We argue that incorporating the link between age and identity development into Whitehouse's theoretical framework is central to understanding when...

According to evolutionary psychology, sex differences originate in dispositions that evolve as a result of natural and sexual selection. Evolutionary theory is a theory of origin in which distal causes-based on conditions in the past-are examined. In this essay, characteristics such as mating preferences, visual-spatial ability, aggression and emot...

The Tell-Me-A-Story (TEMAS) narrative test is a multicultural measure developed for both minority and nonminority children and adolescents. As the off-spring of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), it enhances several narrative features, including the use of chromatic cards, diminished ambiguity and structured pictorial stimuli of the cards, famil...

We investigate the effect of putting a cutoff on finite-temperature field theory. We then apply this procedure to several currently interesting models, i.e., the Higgs model viewed as an effective low-energy theory, the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model, and the dual superconducting model for the confining region of QCD. If the models predict a critical tem...