MTurkR (version 0.4)

ContactWorker: Contact Worker(s)

Description

Contact one or more workers. This sends an email with specified subject line and body text to one or more workers. This can be used to recontact workers in panel/longitudinal research or to send follow-up work. Most likely will need to be used in tandem with GrantBonus to implement panels.

Usage

ContactWorker(subjects, msgs, workers, batch = FALSE, keypair = credentials(), 
              print = getOption('MTurkR.print'), 
              browser = getOption('MTurkR.browser'),
              log.requests = getOption('MTurkR.log'), 
              sandbox = getOption('MTurkR.sandbox'),
              validation.test = getOption('MTurkR.test'))

Arguments

subjects

A character string containing subject line of an email, or a vector of character strings of of length equal to the number of workers to be contacted containing the subject line of the email for each worker. Maximum of 200 characters.

msgs

A character string containing body text of an email, or a vector of character strings of of length equal to the number of workers to be contacted containing the body text of the email for each worker. Maximum of 4096 characters. Newlines can be specified

workers

A character string containing a WorkerId, or a vector of character strings containing multiple WorkerIds.

batch

A logical (default is FALSE), indicating whether workers should be contacted in batches of 100 (the maximum allowed by the API). This significantly reduces the time required to contact workers, but eliminates the ability to send customized me

keypair

A two-item character vector containing an AWS Access Key ID in the first position and the corresponding Secret Access Key in the second position. Set default with credentials.

print

Optionally print the results of the API request to the standard output. Default is TRUE.

browser

Optionally open the request in the default web browser, rather than opening in R. Default is FALSE.

log.requests

A logical specifying whether API requests should be logged. Default is TRUE. See readlogfile for details.

sandbox

Optionally execute the request in the MTurk sandbox rather than the live server. Default is FALSE.

validation.test

A logical specifying whether only the pre-request checks should be conducted and the request URL returned (without executing the request). Default is FALSE.

Value

• A dataframe containing the list of workers, subjects, and messages, and whether the request to contact each of them was valid.

Details

Send an email to one or more workers, either with a common subject and body text or subject and body customized for each worker. In batch mode (when batch=TRUE), workers are contacted in batches of 100 with a single identical email. If one email fails (e.g., for one worker) the other emails should be sent successfully. That is to say, the request as a whole will be valid but will return additional information about which workers were not contacted. This information can be found in the MTurkR log file, or by calling the request with browser=TRUE and viewing the XML responses directly. Note: It is only possible to contact workers who have performed work for you previously. When attempting to contact a worker who has not worked for you before, this function will indicate that the request was successful even though the email is not sent. The function will return a value of HardFailure for Valid when this occurs. The printed results may therefore appear contradictory because MTurk reports that requests to contact these workers are Valid, but they are not actually contacted. In batch, this means that a batch will be valid but individual ineligible workers will be reported as not contacted. ContactWorkers() and contact() are aliases.

References

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSMechTurk/latest/AWSMturkAPI/ApiReference_NotifyWorkersOperation.html{API Reference}

Examples

a <- "Complete a follow-up survey for $.50"
b <- "Thanks for completing my HIT!
I will pay a $.50 bonus if you complete a follow-up survey by Friday at 5:00pm.
The survey can be completed at
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/pssurvey?c=A1RO9UEXAMPLE."
c1 <- "A1RO9UEXAMPLE"
d <- ContactWorker(subjects=a,msgs=b,workers=c)

c2 <- c("A1RO9EXAMPLE1","A1RO9EXAMPLE2","A1RO9EXAMPLE3")
3 <- ContactWorker(subjects=a,msgs=b,workers=c2)