Online Crowdsourcing to Study Trauma and Mental Health Symptoms in Military Populations: A Case for Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) Platform

Clinical Impact Statement The current study examined the utility of recruiting military samples for clinically focused research via Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Consistent with past MTurk research, we found greater reported trauma, mental health diagnoses, and symptom severity. Investigation of the psychometrics of clinical measures indicated the data were behaving in ways consistent with theoretically and empirically driven expectations. Findings suggest that if recommended approaches are taken to protect the quality of the data, MTurk appears to be a useful resource for recruiting military samples. Introduction: Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) appears to be a reliable resource for studying clinical populations and accessing hard-to-reach populations. Recent research suggests that MTurk may also be a viable option for military recruitment. Objective: The goal of the current study was to examine the utility of collecting clinical data on military samples recruited via MTurk. Method: Participants were 535 military veterans (M-age = 37.45; 71.8% men; 69.5% White) who completed measures assessing trauma and mental health. Results: Findings indicate that rates of military traumas and mental health diagnoses were higher than published comparisons; posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression symptoms were found to be higher than values found in a nationally representative sample, lower than a treatment-seeking sample, and comparable to a MTurk-recruited military sample. Alcohol misuse was found to be higher than both nationally representative and treatment-seeking samples. Psychometric analyses indicated support for convergent validity of measures, and confirmatory factor analysis results demonstrated that empirically supported factor models of PTSD were replicated in the current sample; the hybrid model demonstrated the best fit. Conclusions: Our findings support the utility of MTurk for collecting clinical data on military samples. Increasing access to and recruitment of military samples is important for advancing the field of military psychology.