Setup required accounts

Before you can run experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk with psiTurk, you need to create accounts with three required services: Amazon Web Services, Amazon Mechanical Turk Requester, and psiTurk Secure Ad Server. Instructions for creating each of these accounts are provided below.

1. Create an AWS account
2. Create an Amazon Mechanical Turk Requester account
3. Create a psiTurk Secure Ad Server account

Create an AWS account

Amazon Mechanical Turk is service of Amazon Web Services (AWS). In order to use any service of AWS, you must create an AWS account. To create an account:

1. Visit aws.amazon.com and select the Create new account button
2. Follow the online instructions
3. Get your security credentials

Important notes

• You must use the same email and password for both your AWS account and your Amazon Mechanical Turk requester account
• You can select the "basic (free)" support plan

For more detailed instructions, watch the AWS video on how to create an AWS account here:

Get your AWS security credentials

AWS uses two security keys to protect your data: an access key ID (kind of like a username) and a secret access key (kind of like a password). To access AWS via psiturk, you will need to configure psiturk with these security keys in [step 2](Install and configure psiturk). To access your security keys:

1. Sign-in to AWS at http://aws.amazon.com/security-credentials
2. Select Continue to Security Credentials
3. Select the Create New Access Key button
4. In Create Access Key choose Download Key File

• You're security keys will be automatically downloaded into a file called rootkey.csv. Save this file in a secure place. You will retrieve your access keys from it in [step 2](Install and configure psiTurk).

Create an Amazon Mechanical Turk Requester account

Before you can run your experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk, you must have an Amazon Mechanical Turk Requester account. To create and register a Requester account:

1. Visit https://requester.mturk.com
2. Click Create an Account
3. Enter your email address

• Important Notes: Your Amazon Mechanical Turk Requester account must be created using the same credentials (email address and password) as the AWS account that you created above

4. Follow the prompts to complete your Requester account registration.

Create a psiTurk Secure Ad Server account

The psiTurk Secure Ad Server allows you to post your experiment's ad (kind of like a recruitment flyer for the internet) to mechanical turk. The following screenshot is taken from https://psiturk.org/ad_server/ and describes the purpose of the Secure Ad Server.

To create a psiTurk Secure Ad Server account:

1. Visit https://psiturk.org/login
2. Click the Sign up in 1 step! link
3. Click on Request an invite
4. Fill out the form (including the invite code you received via email)

To retrieve your psiTurk Secure Ad Server security keys:

1. Login to your account at https://psiturk.org/login
2. Click on API Keys in the sidebar of your dashboard

Setup required accounts complete!

You have completed the first step in running experiments on mechanical turk! Go on to [Step 2: Install and configure psiTurk](Install and configure psiTurk) or return to the main wiki page to continue to the next steps.