ArticlePsychological methods2025
Yes stormtrooper, these are the droids you are looking for: Identifying and preliminarily evaluating bot and fraud detection strategies in online psychological research.
Article in Psychological methods, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Participants using GenAI in online studies: an overview and recommendations for researchers and reviewers.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Linguistic markers of interpretation bias in nontrauma narratives and associations with PTSD among sexual minority cisgender women, transgender men and women, and gender diverse people.Psychological trauma : theory, research, practice and policy · 2026Article
- Brief transdiagnostic cognitive behavioral therapy and expressive writing for hazardous drinking and posttraumatic stress symptoms among sexual and gender minority adults: Pilot trial protocol.Contemporary clinical trials communications · 2026Article
- Co-occurring daily minority stressors and dissociation among trauma-exposed sexual minority women, transgender, and nonbinary people.Journal of traumatic stress · 2026Article
- Real-Time Exposure to Intersectional Minority Stressors and Alcohol Use: Protocol for an Ecological Momentary Assessment Study With Latinx and Non-Latinx Sexual Minority Youth.JMIR research protocols · 2026Article
- Addressing Survey Fraud in Online Health Research: A Case Study of Latine Sexual Minority Men.Research in nursing & health · 2025Article
- A Vision for Archives of Sexual Behavior.Archives of sexual behavior · 2025Article
- Data Verification and Respondent Validity for a Web-Based Sexual Health Survey: Tutorial.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- A quasi-experimental study examining the efficacy of multimodal bot screening tools and recommendations to preserve data integrity in online psychological research.The American psychologist · 2024Article
- Do Traditional Gender Role Beliefs Promote Abstinence and Sexual Health Behaviors Among Latina College Students?Archives of sexual behavior · 2024Article
- AI-powered fraud and the erosion of online survey integrity: an analysis of 31 fraud detection strategies.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Bots (i.e., automated software programs that perform various tasks) and fraudulent responders pose a growing and costly threat to psychological research as well as affect data integrity. However, few studies have been published on this topic. (a) Describe our experience with bots and fraudulent responders using a case study, (b) present various bot and fraud detection tactics (BFDTs) and identify the number of suspected bot and fraudulent respondents removed, (c) propose a consensus confidence system for eliminating bots and fraudulent responders to determine the number of BFDTs researchers should use, and (d) examine the initial effectiveness of dynamic versus static BFDT protocols. This study is part of a larger 14-day experience sampling method study with trauma-exposed sexual minority cisgender women and transgender and/or nonbinary people. Faced with several bot and fraudulent responder infiltrations during data collection, we developed an evolving BFDT protocol to eliminate bots and fraudulent responders. Throughout this study, we received 24,053 responses on our baseline survey. After applying our BFDT protocols, we eliminated 99.75% of respondents that were likely bots or fraudulent responders. Some BFDTs seemed to be more effective and afford higher confidence than others, dynamic protocols seemed to be more effective than static protocols, and bots and fraudulent responders introduced significant bias in the results. This study advances online psychological research by curating one of the largest samples of bot and fraudulent respondents and pilot testing the largest number of BFDTs to date. Recommendations for future research are provided. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.