Assessing work-asthma interaction with Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Abstract

To illustrate the utility of crowdsourcing for occupational health surveillance. Amazon Mechanical Turk was used to recruit and obtain information from employed persons with asthma, who answered questions about work-asthma interactions. Data collection from 60 subjects required only a few hours. Participants spent on average 7 minutes responding to seven questions (one optional) and used an average of 708 words. Work exacerbation, interference of asthma with work, and suggested workplace accommodation are frequent (83% reported at least one interaction). The full spectrum of work-asthma interactions should be considered. Modern crowdsourcing methods have considerable potential as occupational health surveillance tools because of their effectiveness; efficiency and financial viability are additional important advantages.