ArticleJMIR research protocols2024
Combating Fraudulent Participation in Urban American Indian and Alaska Native Virtual Health Research: Protocol for Increasing Data Integrity in Online Research (PRIOR).
Article in JMIR research protocols, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04376346 (Preventing Alcohol Exposed Pregnancy Among Urban Native Young Women), which is not on this map. Cited by 6 papers.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Preventing Alcohol Exposed Pregnancy Among Urban Native Young Women: Mobile CHOICES
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- What nourishes us: psychometric validation of culturally grounded measures of indigenous nourishment in a cross-sectional study of two urban native communities.Public health nutrition · 2026Article
- Social Media Recruitment in Indigenous and Native American Populations: Challenges in the AI Age.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2025Article
- Culture and COVID-19 Related Impacts on Alcohol-Exposed Pregnancy Risk Among Urban American Indian and Alaska Native Young Adults: A Path Analysis.The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2025Article
- Imposters, Bots, and Other Threats to Data Integrity in Online Research: Scoping Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Best Practices.Online journal of public health informatics · 2025Review
- Challenges and Lessons Learned in Managing Web-Based Survey Fraud for the Garnering Effective Outreach and Research in Georgia for Impact Alliance-Community Engagement Alliance Survey Administrations.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Article
- Identifying and Removing Fraudulent Attempts to Enroll in a Human Health Improvement Intervention Trial in Rural Communities.Methods and protocols · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundWhile the advantages of using the internet and social media for research recruitment are well documented, the evolving online environment also enhances motivations for misrepresentation to receive incentives or to "troll" research studies. Such fraudulent assaults can compromise data integrity, with substantial losses in project time; money; and especially for vulnerable populations, research trust. With the rapid advent of new technology and ever-evolving social media platforms, it has become easier for misrepresentation to occur within online data collection. This perpetuation can occur by bots or individuals with malintent, but careful planning can help aid in filtering out fraudulent data.
objectiveUsing an example with urban American Indian and Alaska Native young women, this paper aims to describe PRIOR (Protocol for Increasing Data Integrity in Online Research), which is a 2-step integration protocol for combating fraudulent participation in online survey research.
methodsFrom February 2019 to August 2020, we recruited participants for formative research preparatory to an online randomized control trial of a preconceptual health program. First, we described our initial protocol for preventing fraudulent participation, which proved to be unsuccessful. Then, we described modifications we made in May 2020 to improve the protocol performance and the creation of PRIOR. Changes included transferring data collection platforms, collecting embedded geospatial variables, enabling timing features within the screening survey, creating URL links for each method or platform of data collection, and manually confirming potentially eligible participants' identifying information.
resultsBefore the implementation of PRIOR, the project experienced substantial fraudulent attempts at study enrollment, with less than 1% (n=6) of 1300 screened participants being identified as truly eligible. With the modified protocol, of the 461 individuals who completed a screening survey, 381 did not meet the eligibility criteria assessed on the survey. Of the 80 that did, 25 (31%) were identified as ineligible via PRIOR. A total of 55 (69%) were identified as eligible and verified in the protocol and were enrolled in the formative study.
conclusionsFraudulent surveys compromise study integrity, validity of the data, and trust among participant populations. They also deplete scarce research resources including respondent compensation and personnel time. Our approach of PRIOR to prevent online misrepresentation in data was successful. This paper reviews key elements regarding fraudulent data participation in online research and demonstrates why enhanced protocols to prevent fraudulent data collection are crucial for building trust with vulnerable populations.
trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT04376346; https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04376346. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/52281.
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