ABSTRACT
This chapter first explores the viability of using students as participants in research. While students may not be applicable for studies that emphasize external validity, they may be preferred as participants for experimental studies where internal validity is the dominant concern and participants do not need specialized expertise. A number of issues are raised in this chapter and should be carefully considered when making the decision of whether student participants are acceptable and desirable. This chapter also explores the increasing availability and use of online participants. Since the dominant source of online participants is MTurk, the focus herein is on the extensive body of research that examines validity and reliability issues of online participants obtained via that system. This research demonstrates that online participants have proven to be as good as or even better than student participants and general adult populations. This review is critical as a frequent concern posed to researchers using online participant pools relate to the quality, validity and reliability of the data. Contrary to common perceptions, data obtained from online participants have actually proven to be of very high quality – including high validity and reliability.
