Fraudulent participation in online studies

Online research has become an important way to reach people who may not otherwise be able to take part in studies. It can help researchers include larger and more diverse groups of participants, reduce travel barriers, and make research more accessible.

However, online research also creates new challenges. Some studies are affected by people taking part more than once, giving false information to meet study criteria, using multiple online identities, or completing surveys without properly engaging with the questions. These issues can affect the quality of research data and may lead to findings that do not accurately reflect the experiences of genuine participants.

This work focuses on understanding and raising awareness of the problem of non-genuine participation in online research, particularly in health, mental health and neurodevelopmental research. The aim is to help researchers plan studies more safely, protect the quality of their data, and respond to suspected non-genuine participation in an ethical and proportionate way.

We brought together learning from several research teams at the University of Nottingham who had experienced problems with online recruitment, surveys, interviews, focus groups and clinical trials.

This included looking across different types of online research to understand:

This work led to two academic publications and a practical guidance document for researchers. The guidance was developed with a University of Nottingham working group and input from the UK Research Integrity Office.

The guidance supports researchers to think about these issues across the whole research process, including grant applications, ethics applications, recruitment, data collection, analysis and reporting.

We found that non-genuine participation is a growing issue in online research and can affect many different types of studies.

The main issues include:

These problems can have a major impact. They can lead to loss of research time, wasted funding, delayed publications, unusable data, and additional pressure on researchers. They can also affect genuine participants and community partners, especially when research involves sensitive lived experiences.

We also found that there is no single solution. Researchers need to plan ahead and use a combination of strategies. These may include clearer recruitment processes, careful wording in adverts, staged recruitment, eligibility checks, monitoring incoming data, delaying payment until checks are completed, and being transparent about how data quality issues were handled.

Importantly, any checks must be proportionate and ethical. Measures designed to protect data quality should not make it harder for genuine participants to take part, especially people from groups who already experience barriers to research involvement.