Assessing work-asthma interaction with Amazon Mechanical Turk

Objectives: To illustrate the utility of crowdsourcing for occupational health surveillance. Methods: Amazon Mechanical Turk was used to recruit and obtain information from employed persons with asthma, who answered questions about work-asthma interactions. Results: 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). Conclusions: 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.