Association for Behavior Analysis International

Online crowdsourcing platforms have revolutionized 21st century social science research. With sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk and Reddit, researchers can rapidly recruit large, representative samples at a low cost. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, this trend is likely to continue, as researchers pivot to conducting human subject research virtually. Despite this proliferation of online research, extant guidelines for ethical research are written for in-person recruitment and do not provide guidance sensitive enough for potential ethical pitfalls unique to virtual platforms. In this paper, we provide a review of the current guidelines from the Behavior Analysis Certification Board’s Professional and Ethical Compliance Code, The National Institutes of Health Guiding Principles for Ethical Research, and the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles and Code of Conduct. We review why these guidelines are insufficient in their current form for online research. We will present a case study of crowdsourced recruitment during the Covid-19 pandemic to illustrate potential ethical concerns when using online platforms. Lastly, we will discuss additional guidelines we recommend based on our experience for conducting ethical crowdsourced internet-based research.