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.
May 8, 2024
Using LLMs and 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
July 18, 2023
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.
April 11, 2023
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.
December 23, 2022
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.
May 15, 2022
Replications can help improve relevance of accounting experiments
Both replications and practical relevance are awkward discussion topics for most experimental accounting researchers. Yet, replications offer a concrete way to address concerns we may have about the 'practical relevance' of experimental findings.
May 3, 2022
Why We Ignore Free-form Communication and Why We Shouldn't
People in workplace settings can typically communicate freely with each other, but many experiments scale communication down to a restricted form. Should we maintain this status quo or is there room for free-form communication? Read this post by Farah Arshad and Cardin Masselink to find out more.
February 7, 2022
Analyzing learning rates (pt. 1): Common pitfalls
Do you want to learn how to analyze learning? In this first post of a two-part series, Jake Zureich discusses common pitfalls when comparing learning curves using an illustrative example.
October 1, 2021
The role of exploratory analyses in accounting research
Developing theory after collecting data is problematic because the theoretical predictions are post hoc. However, does that imply that all exploratory analyses are pointless? In this post, Jeremy Bentley explains that exploratory analyses can still add value even when researchers prefer to pre-commit to ex-ante theoretical predictions.
September 20, 2021
Running your experiment on MTurk
With the increasing popularity of online experiments, many have asked us for advice on how to conduct experiments on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. In this post, Christian Peters provides a hands-on guide.
August 31, 2021