The CloudResearch progress bar and downloadable .csv file show the workers who submitted and were approved for your HIT. The number of participants shown in your survey platform or data file is the number of workers who entered your survey.
CloudResearch shows the progress of your study on the Dashboard and in your downloadable .csv file based solely on HIT submissions. Your survey creation platform (e.g., Qualtrics) and data file, on the other hand, show the number of participants who started or entered your survey, regardless of whether they submitted their HIT to Mechanical Turk. Hence, there are a variety of reasons why you may see more responses in your survey or data file than on CloudResearch.
- A worker may have accepted your HIT on MTurk, started your survey, but then abandoned the study halfway through, returning the HIT and not completing your study.
- A worker may have accepted your HIT on MTurk, completed your entire study, but run out of time to submit the HIT to MTurk. In such instances the worker will usually contact you to ask for compensation.
- Your data file may show "partial responses" where workers only answer half of your study questions. You may have several partial responses from the same worker if the worker re-enters your survey multiple times, something that can happen even if you use a "Block Ballot Box Stuffing" tool or similar tool.
To cross reference the workers in your data file with those that submitted the HIT on CloudResearch, you can download the .csv file associated with your study. The .csv displays all workers who submitted the HIT for approval.
You can download the .csv file by going to your study dashboard and clicking Options on the bottom left-hand side of the toolbar for your study. Then click Download CSV.
