Analyzing the health status of crowd workers compared to desk workers

Abstract

Microtask crowdsourcing workers, also known as crowd workers, perform small tasks known as microtasks.
These people use crowdsourcing platforms to complete these microtasks.
Crowd workers have to work in front of a screen to complete these microtasks, risking musculoskeletal problems and other mental problems.
Their working conditions look similar to desk workers, who are people that work remotely or at the office behind a desk.
This study aims to find the health differences between crowd workers and desk workers.
It will provide a general overview on the subjective well-being, experienced and mental health.
In order to analyze the differences in health, a survey will be deployed on a crowdsourcing platform in order to recruit crowd workers and desk workers will be recruited through snowball sampling.
The questions of the survey are divided into 5 groups, each representing a health category: general health, workspace quality, physical well-being, social well-being and emotional well-being.
For this study 17 crowd workers were recruited and 9 desk workers.
From the results, desk workers are healthier in general, have a healthier workspace because some desk workers work in ergonomically good offices, a healthier physical well-being, a healthier social well-being due to them having colleagues and a better emotional well-being. Crowd workers have a lower level of stress, because of the microtasks being mostly very simple, while desk workers have mentally demanding deadlines and projects to work on.