Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is made possible by a large and diverse community of Worker customers around the world. These customers contribute time and talent every day to help make Requester customers successful. Today, we’re pleased to introduce a new way for Requesters to get results from Workers that are best suited to their Tasks, and for Workers to spend time only on Tasks they are qualified by Requesters to complete.

In the past, Requesters that wanted to find a specific cohort of Workers had to introduce additional questions into their Tasks (HITs) and oversample, discarding results that didn’t match their target criteria. For instance, a Requester that wants their Task completed only by Workers that use an Android phone had to begin their Task by asking Workers if they met this requirement. For qualified Workers, these added questions led to longer times to complete the work and submit the Task. For those Workers that did not meet the requirement, it led to disappointment and frustration at being unable to complete the Task they had accepted.

Now, using the Requester Website, any Requester can select specific, pre-defined cohorts of Workers at the time they create their Task. Requesters who have used a System Qualification such as Location, HIT Approval Rate (%), or Number of HITs Approved will already be familiar with the process. While creating a Task, Requesters can click “(+) Add another criterion” and select a Premium Qualification required for Workers. We expect Premium Qualifications to be especially helpful for Requesters posting Survey Tasks on MTurk.

Adding Qualifications using the MTurk Requester Website

The use of Premium Qualifications incurs additional per-assignment fees. Details are available on the pricing page.

With today’s launch, we have introduced the first Premium Qualifications, Primary Mobile Device — iPhone and Primary Mobile Device — Android. As a Requester, you can select Workers that have indicated either Android or iPhone as their primary mobile device. We expect these Premium Qualifications to be even more useful as we evolve our new Worker experience, which features support for mobile devices and tablets. We plan to introduce additional Premium Qualifications soon. To suggest a new Premium Qualification for consideration, or to share feedback about this feature, please complete this two question survey.

Today’s introduction of Premium Qualifications makes it even easier for Requesters to focus on the ideal Workers to complete their work around the world. We expect this richer offer for Requesters to lead to more relevant selection of great Tasks for Workers everywhere.