Currently submitted to: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Mar 15, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 15, 2024 - May 10, 2024
(currently open for review)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Issues with online studies, an institutional example of a widespread challenge
ABSTRACT
This paper reports on the growing issues experienced when conducting internet-based research. Non-genuine participants, repeat responders, and misrepresentation are common issues in health research posing significant challenges to data integrity. A summary of existing data on the topic and the different impacts on studies is presented. Seven case studies experienced by different teams within our institutions are then reported, primarily focused on mental health research. Finally, strategies to combat these challenges are presented, including protocol development, transparent recruitment practices, and continuous data monitoring. These strategies and challenges impact the entire research cycle and need to be considered prior to, during and post data collection. With a lack of current clear guidelines on this topic, this report attempts to highlight considerations to be taken to minimise the impact of such challenges on researchers, studies and wider research. Researchers conducting online research must put mitigating strategies in place, and reporting on mitigation efforts should be mandatory in grant applications and publications to uphold the credibility of online research.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.