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--></style></head><body lang="EN-US" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style="word-wrap:break-word"><div class="WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black;background:white">Hi all,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black;background:white">I’m curious if any researchers here have experience with this issue. Over the past few years, online questionnaires have become infested with large numbers of fraudulent responses. It appears to be a combination of bots and human beings who pretend to be legitimate participants. In my experience, the problem occurs only when compensation is offered in exchange for participating in a study. This problem is very time-consuming to counteract and it can compromise data integrity.</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black"><br><span style="background:white">Question: Do any of you know whether the problem occurs when a questionnaire is posted within a private group on social media (Facebook, etc.) or does it only strike when the link to a questionnaire becomes publicly available?</span><br><span style="background:white">I believe distributing a questionnaire via email can circumvent the problem. But we may want to recruit from closed Facebook groups, too. I also worry about posting to a publicly archived list like on NFBNet.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black;background:white">I'd love any other advice for either preventing the fraud or efficiently weeding out fraudulent responses, too. Even the automated survey software features are not reliable (Qualtrics has a fraud detection feature that suffers both false-negative and false-positive issues when comparing its work to that of human beings looking intelligently at responses).</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black"><br><span style="background:white">Our most effective strategy has been to put a required open-ended question in that asks about some esoteric blindness issue (we survey only blind participants) and then deleting anyone whose answers don't make sense in a blindness context. The fake answers to this question can be wildly entertaining. But we still occasionally get responses that aren't 100% distinguishable as real or fake.</span><br><span style="background:white">Thanks everyone!</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="mso-ligatures:none">Arielle Silverman, Ph.D.</span></b><span style="mso-ligatures:none"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ligatures:none">Director of Research</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ligatures:none">American Foundation for the Blind </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ligatures:none">Direct Phone: </span><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333">202-469-6832</span><span style="mso-ligatures:none"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ligatures:none">Email: <a href="mailto:asilverman@afb.org">asilverman@afb.org</a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ligatures:none"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ligatures:none"><a href="https://calendar.app.google/Gbrte5BFxZ2HLpEb7">Schedule a call with me</a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ligatures:none"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="mso-ligatures:none">I currently work Monday-Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern time.</span></i><span style="mso-ligatures:none"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div></body></html>