I have a task that is recruiting very slowly (out of the batch we put up, only about 2 new participants an hour complete, and it takes roughly 3 hours to get 9 completions).

Specs are:

• psychology study, takes about 30-45min
• paying $5, with a $1 bonus (so $6)
  • (actually tried paying as high as $7 with $1 bonus = $8, but every time we raised it, we actually got people even slower for some reason)
• criteria: greater/equal to 98% approval rating, in US, can't have done before
  • (we also had Masters workers only turned on, but turned it off to open up to more people)
• our profile's worker ratings is good on TurkerView

Are longer surveys just not popular with MTurk workers? Any other reasons folks can think of for why we're going so slow?

Many thanks.

 

In my opinion that’s a good paying HIT and not too long at all! I kept trying to catch that HIT yesterday and couldn’t . So I am really not sure. When i initially read your post i thought u meant u were only putting a few out per hour lol (had to come back edit my reply) wow Ive obviously been online too long today lol

 

In my opinion that's a bad paying HIT. Time length is mostly irrelevant as there are plenty of people willing to do longer HITs if the pay is right. The problem is the pay itself, most likely. $8 an hour (assuming maximum pay and maximum time) is, well, laughable. This is not true for everyone, as seen by the newer person above me, but for anyone who's been turking for even a little while that's not a HIT to waste your time on. Especially since you are effectively tying up such a large amount of time.

TL : DR It's not that longer surveys are unpopular, getting paid half the minimum wage per hour is.

 

Point taken, thanks. Hmm, in your opinion what would be a good pay for 30-60min? California minimum wage? Further, will people first only see the base $6 and not the bonus unless they read further? I guess then it looks even worse.

As it stands, it takes on average 45m to complete, that means that it would be about $10/hr rate for most people, which is average across the US. But your perspective is telling--it could take up to 1hr, and worst case that ends up being a poor rate. I suppose it's generally easier for people with shorter hits, because it's easier to afford paying them $1 or something, which is not much, but it is if the task only takes like 5min.

 

I see that you have a few valid points. I've been Turking for more than a little while so I guess it's just based on everyone's own individual opinion. Granted I don't have my Masters but I do pretty well. I definitely wouldn’t mind doing that HIT at all. Where i am located that is minimum wage per hour and that it's not even talking about taxes. so yeah it would be worth it for me to do for sure.

 

Are people failing attention checks or getting screened out? Just brainstorming.

 

Thanks. Nope, anyone can reach completion provided they want to.

 

I'd add that I played around with the rate, going up and down by a few dollars. It didn't seem to make a difference--strangely, going up a couple dollars seemed to go even slower. I'm not sure if people have some kind of weird filters set up on HitScraper or something that account for this. I didn't go up to CA minimum wage though.