Fake Participants in Online Patient-Oriented Research: How it Looks and How to Navigate It

ZOOM LINK: https://ualberta-ca.zoom.us/j/6522473373

The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly accelerated the shift to online study recruitment and data collection approaches. This had many benefits, including wider reach for participant recruitment, improved cost efficiency for researchers, and reduced barriers for participants (such as travel time and costs) to take part in research. Unfortunately, the rise of online quantitative and qualitative research has also reduced barriers for more fraudulent activity to occur. Fake participants (that is, research participants who are purposefully misrepresenting their lived experience, most usually to receive participation incentives) are increasingly sophisticated in their ability to bypass security measures implemented by the research team, as well as in their ability to impersonate genuine participants, which makes it more challenging to identify them during data collection and analysis activities.

In this session, we will share some real-world experiences of encountering fake participants in online recruitment and data collection for surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Our diverse panel of patient partners, researchers, as well as representatives from the University of Calgary Research Ethics Board, and the Calgary Police will discuss how to prevent fraud before data collection, identify fraud during and after data collection, and take ethical or legal actions to address it. The session will end with a Q & A session, so come with questions of your own to ask the panelists!