MTurk is a crowdsourcing platform that allows researchers to post human intelligence tasks (HITs) that “workers” can choose to complete for compensation. Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a potential resource that researchers can use to recruit individuals into studies that use data from wearables. Previous research on wearable device data sharing for research has yielded mixed results regarding the willingness to share such data.

From a research perspective, wearables hold promise for collecting data from study participants in a convenient, scalable way that is more likely to reach a broad and diverse population than traditional research approaches. In addition, regular feedback provided by wearables shows promise for positively influencing physical activity and weight loss outcomes.

Using wearables has become very popular in part because data collection and presentation occur in real time and due to their potential for having a positive effect on health and fitness. These devices’ functions may include tracking and monitoring health, fitness, food, and aging-related metrics. A wearable device is a small hardware technology that people wear on various parts of their bodies.

11. tchia litman, ph.d.