It's raining bots: How easier access to internet surveys has created the perfect storm

Abstract

Online surveys are an increasingly common way to collect data from the public, with social media and financial incentives (e.g. gift cards) commonly used to increase participation rates. Anonymity, ease of response, and the potential to reach diverse demographics have also contributed to the popularity of online surveys. Health services research benefits from the increased accessibility that online survey-based data collection provides; however, fraudulent responses are of concern. The following article describes our team's experience with a national survey of Canadian healthcare providers being overrun with fraudulent responses and approach to ensure the validity of our survey data. We provide recommendations for research teams on how best to design their surveys, work with their institutions to implement safeguards within survey platforms, and screen completed responses. We also describe fraudulent open-text responses that we believe to have been produced with the help of artificial intelligence and are sounding the alarm for other researchers to be aware of this potential threat to data integrity. Informed by the learnings shared, researchers and research institutions can be better equipped to prevent and screen fraudulent responses to continue successfully engage the public in online research.