Writing an Essay on MTurk: Part 2
In part 1, turkers brainstormed some essay topic ideas. Now we want to choose the best topic. We’ve had turkers rate and compare items in the past. For this experiment, we tried something a little different: each turker saw all 18 essay topics, and selected the best 3.
We solicited 100 responses for 2 cents each. Due to negligence on my part, the HIT only worked in Google Chrome, so we only got 50 responses over the course of a week.
Results:
Here we show the essay topics sorted by the number of votes each received:
| 28 | How effective is recycling in saving the environment? |
| 25 | How important is a college education in todays job market? |
| 18 | Smoking should not be allowed in restaurants and bars. |
| 13 | Should the drinking age be lowered? |
| 12 | Has the invention of the internet and the expansion of new-age media been good or bad news for the music industry? |
| 10 | How has the number of hours a kid is on his computer or watching tv affected his grades in school? |
| 6 | What ar the pros and cons of the bailouts our government has given? |
| 6 | Should illegal immigrants be deserving of health benefits? |
| 6 | Do you think sports stars get special treatment from the judicial system? |
| 6 | Would it be good for the United States to put a cap on the number of children you can have while on Federal Welfare? |
| 5 | What country has the most gender equality? |
| 5 | Should Physician-Assisted-Suicide, or euthanasia be legalized? |
| 3 | why do so many older cats die of cancer? |
| 3 | What new direction will hip hop music take? |
| 2 | Should instant-replay be used for more than home runs in baseball? |
| 2 | Is a salary cap necessary to restore competitive parity in Major League Baseball? |
| 0 | Is Hugo Chavez and his anti-United States of America sentiment good for Latin America? |
Each user saw a randomized ordering of the essay topics. One might worry that users are likely to choose whichever essay topic appears at the top. This chart shows a histogram of votes given to essay topics appearing at different places in the list:
The chart is more-or-less uniform, which is good.
Next step:
I’m considering going with the turker’s second choice of essay topic, since I think people will have more first-hand experience with the role of education in the job market. I fear that the recycling topic will be too difficult.
The next step will be to have turkers brainstorm topics for the 3 supporting paragraphs of our 5 paragraph essay.
Code:
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