Did people really drink bleach to prevent COVID-19? A guide for protecting survey data against problematic respondents

Abstract

Survey respondents who are non-attentive, respond randomly, or misrepresent who they are can impact the outcomes of surveys. Prior findings reported by the CDC have suggested that people engaged in highly dangerous cleaning practices during the COVID-19 pandemic, including ingesting household cleaners such as bleach. In our attempts to replicate the CDC’s results, we found that 100% of reported ingestion of household cleaners are made by problematic respondents. Once inattentive, acquiescent, and careless respondents are removed from the sample, we find no evidence that people ingested cleaning products to prevent a COVID-19 infection. These findings have important implications for public health and medical survey research, as well as for best practices for avoiding problematic respondents in all survey research conducted online.

Analytic Atheism & Analytic Apostasy Across Cultures

“…We pulled in only those Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers that passed a battery of CloudResearch's quality controls (Litman et al, 2023) since MTurk's internal metrics (such as approval rate or minimum submissions) are not good indicators of quality (Hauser et al, 2023;Byrd, 2024). We aimed to recruit 250 people to allow observational relationships to stabilize (Schönbrodt and Perugini, 2013).…”

“…For example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control posted a report that four percent of survey respondents reported "drinking or gargling diluted bleach solutions" during the pre-vaccine portion of the COVID-19 pandemic (Gharpure, 2020). CloudResearch replicated this result, but found that "80-90% of reports of household cleanser ingestion" were from respondents who also selected impossible claims such as "having had a fatal heart attack" or "eating concrete for its iron content" (Litman et al, 2023).…”

Introducing Connect by CloudResearch: Advancing Online Participant Recruitment in the Digital Age

“…What is less well known, however, is exactly how bad problems with data quality have gotten in online research. Across platforms, between 30 and 40 percent of data are fraudulent (Berry et al, 2022;Chandler et al, 2019;Litman et al, 2023). This fraud may cost companies billions of dollars annually, misleads researchers, and makes it harder to advance scientific knowledge (Dixit & Bai, 2023;Litman, 2023).…”

Modeling the Impact of Misinformation on the Transmission Dynamics of COVID-19

“…False treatments and cures for COVID-19 have also been promoted, leading to dangerous consequences for individuals who follow them. For instance, the use of disinfectants, such as bleach, to treat COVID-19 has been widely reported, leading to severe injuries and deaths [12]. False claims that certain drugs, such as hydroxychloroquine, are effective in treating COVID-19 have also been circulated, leading to hoarding and shortages of the drug, which is actually not effective in treating the virus [13].…”