Fraudulent participation in psychological research using virtual synchronous interviews: ethical challenges and potential solutions

ABSTRACT

Online research offers advantages including recruitment cost, diminished equity-related participation barriers, and convenience; however, there are growing concerns regarding fraudulent participation. Guidance to navigate these challenges exists for online research generally (e.g. surveys), but remains sparse for the specific challenge of fraudulent participation within virtual synchronous interviews. No work has explored this topic within an explicit, detailed ethical framework. Reflecting on our experiences navigating fraudulent participation in virtual synchronous research, we address this gap using the Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists as a guiding framework to describe challenges, explore ethical considerations, and identify potential solutions and research directions.

KEYWORDS:

• Online research
• interviews
• ethics
• fraud
• impersonation

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We extend our sincere thanks to research team members who shared their feedback and experiences and collaborated on developing and implementing ethical solutions when faced with fraudulent research participation. We are grateful to our Research Ethics Board for their support in working through these issues, and consultation from thoughtful colleagues. Thank you to the eligible research participants who have also been patient with us as we implemented many of the strategies listed in Tables 1–5 and participated in our work. KM and CMM co-conceptualized the analysis, co-wrote the experiences section, and oversaw implementation of all revisions and contributions to the paper. KM was the research supervisor of BD while CMM is the supervisor of ET and DL. KM led the literature review and wrote the background. CMM wrote the ethical analysis and developed Tables 1–5. ET and DP made written contributions to the discussion. ET, BD, and DL participated in a review of the literature, contributed to Tables 1–5, and shared their experiences. All authors reviewed and made editorial contributions to the final manuscript.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare. CMM is a member of the Canadian Psychological Association Committee on Ethics but her role and contributions within this manuscript are as an individual faculty member/psychologist/author, not as a member of that committee.

Notes

¹ Children Helping Science merged with Lookit, in March, 2022 (https://lookit.mit.edu/).

² Interested readers can review additional examples of survey-based screening questions and problematic response patterns helpfully compiled by Davies et al. (2023) in their report on managing fraudulent participants online.

³ Of note, “all four principles are to be taken into account and balanced in ethical decision making. However, in circumstances in which the ethical principles themselves conflict, it might not be possible to give each principle equal weight. The complexity of many conflicts precludes a firm ordering of the principles. However, the four principles have been ordered according to the weight each generally should be given when they conflict.” (CPA, 2017, p. 4).

Additional information

Funding

Projects described in the present review were funded with support from the Public Health Agency of Canada [AT, CMM] and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [KM].