Effective recruitment or bot attack? The challenge of online research surveys and recommendations to reduce risk and improve robustness: a case study commentary (Preprint)

Abstract

UNSTRUCTURED Online research has exploded in popularity in recent years, enabling researchers to offer both investigations and interventions to broader participant populations than ever before. However, challenges associated with online research have also increased – notably difficulties verifying participant data and deliberate data manipulation by bot and spam responses. To encourage researchers to reflect on the impact of bot attacks on research and how to manage this.* This article presents two case studies where online research was affected by bot and spam attacks, targeting the offer of compensation for research participants and recommendations based on these experiences are made. Screening and verification processes utilised are presented. Based on our experience, security and screening within online research platforms are partly effective, but no solution is available to protect researchers completely against bot attacks Implications for future research and advice for health researchers are discussed.