Recent Posts

The Fall of Constantinople for Amazon's Mechanical Turks?

While the Ottoman Turks caused turmoil in the late Middle Ages and the Age of Reformation, Amazon’s Mechanical Turks are causing a turmoil in experimental research at this moment. While early studies documented that Amazon’s Mechanical Turk participants were valid proxies for experimental accounting research, there are increasing concerns about the quality of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) data.

Using ChatGPT in oTree experiments

The oTree community has put together a useful oTree app. It allows participants to chat with ChatGPT through OpenAI's API. The app itself uses prompts so ChatGPT takes on a character or personality for participants to chat with. However, the possibilities and use-cases for experimental research are endless.

Why you shouldn't trust mediation as process evidence

Mediation is widely used in experimental accounting to obtain process evidence. The primary benefits of mediation are its low cost and easy integration. However, it has a hidden cost that weakens its effectiveness as process evidence. This post explains why it's the least effective method and suggests two better alternatives.

How to prevent bots and farms from taking over and ruining your online experiment

In this post, I share simple techniques to filter participants before they take part in your online experiment. These techniques filter bots and participants using automated scripts plus participants who fake their geolocation using VPN/VPS, proxies, and server farms.

Analyzing learning rates (pt. 2): Two approaches

Do you want to learn how to analyze learning? In this second post of a two-part series, Jake Zureich discusses two approaches when comparing learning curves.