An Inconvenient Truth: Arbitrary Distinctions Between Organizational, Mechanical Turk, and Other Convenience Samples

Sampling strategy has critical implications for the validity of a researcher's conclusions. Despite this, sampling is frequently neglected in research methods textbooks, during the research design process, and in the reporting of our journals. The lack of guidance on this issue often leads reviewers and journal editors to rely on simple rules of thumb, myth, and tradition for judgments about sampling, which promotes the unnecessary and counterproductive characterization of sampling strategies as universally “good” or “bad.” Such oversimplification, especially by journal editors and reviewers, slows the progress of the social sciences by considering legitimate data sources to be categorically unacceptable.…