This appendix outlines the recruitment of participants for the study of business trips outlined in chapter 7. Participants were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and each was paid fifty cents for their participation. The advertisement for respondents asked that only those who had participated in a business trip with an opposite-sex colleague could participate. Participants were then asked to write about their experience on this business trip.
Mechanical Turk is a crowdsourcing web service where individuals can post tasks that require human intelligence or a particular skill. Individuals can then complete the tasks in exchange for payment. In the case of this study, Mechanical Turk users in the United States who had participated in a business trip with an opposite-sex colleague were required to answer questions about their trip in order to be paid.
One concern about online data collection is how representative the sample is. That is, if the participants recruited are not representative of the population in general, then the results are also not generalizable. However, research has found the demographics of Mechanical Turk participants are “at least as representative of the U.S. population as traditional subject pools, with gender, race, age, and education of Internet samples all matching the population more closely than college undergraduate samples and Internet samples in general.”1 Furthermore, the design of Mechanical Turk virtually eliminates the possibility of multiple entries by the same individual. In addition, the anonymity that is afforded through Mechanical Turk may lead participants to respond with greater honesty.
Responses in this survey were completely anonymous. Therefore, the names included in the book are not the actual names of participants.
Twenty-six men, twenty-four women, and one who refused to identify his or her gender were recruited. Forty-three participants reported their occupations. Occupations were varied and a list of occupations can be found in table B.1 below.
Participants were instructed to describe their experience on a business trip with a coworker of the opposite sex. In particular they were asked to mention if there was anything that made them uncomfortable on the trip. Participants typed in a paragraph or two to describe their experiences.
Qualitative analysis using multiple readings of the comments was used to identify the major concepts that emerged. A process of open coding was then applied.2 Codes were generated from a microanalysis involving a line by line reading of the transcripts. The codes were reviewed, and more abstract categories, which applied to several responses, were determined. These categories are described in the text. The names used in the text are not the names of the actual participants.
Table B.1. Participant Professions
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Sales (9) |
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Healthcare (4) |
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Marketing (3) |
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Accountant (2) |
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Business (2) |
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Store manager (2) |
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Technology (4)* |
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Assistant manager in telecommunications |
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Assistant to director of a nonprofit |
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Business owner |
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Columnist |
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Customer service |
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Event coordinator |
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Government |
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Industrial hygienist |
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Lawyer |
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Massage therapist |
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Merchandise distributor |
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Personal assistant |
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Psychologist |
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Public relations |
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Tax consultant |
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Telemarketer |
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Reinsurance broker |
* Two IT directors, one programmer, and one IT advisor