Earlier this year, the Department of Justice announced it was indicting leaders from two market research companies for fabricating respondents and survey data. According to the indictment, the companies “recruited ‘ants’, who pretended to be legitimate survey takers but instead were paid a nominal fee for completing surveys that produced fraudulent market research data.”
This news was unsettling for us non-cheaters in the industry, but not shocking. In an era in which business strategy is increasingly reliant on data—which is a good thing!—the integrity of data has never been more at risk. From professional survey takers like the ones in the indictment to increasingly sophisticated automated bots that fabricate responses, fraudulent activity is on the rise in market research. For market research firms like Campos and the sample providers we partner with, understanding and actively combating fraud is paramount.
The Evolving Face of Market Research Fraud
Market research fraud has evolved over the past few years from simple, manual methods like repeat submissions and “straight-lining” (though those are still issues!) to highly sophisticated, tech-driven attacks. Today’s fraudsters use tactics like:
- Bots and Automated Scripts: These scripts are programmed to mimic human behavior, generating vast amounts of invalid data almost instantaneously.
- Professional Survey Takers: Individuals who take multiple surveys solely for financial incentives, often providing inattentive answers to complete them as quickly as possible. One recent study identified respondents who attempted more than 1,000 surveys in a 24-hour period.
- Misrepresentation: Respondents who lie about their demographics or qualifications to bypass screening questions and participate in surveys or qualitative research they are not intended for.
- Fabricated Data: Deliberately providing nonsensical or false information, which can seriously distort the final data set.
How Market Researchers like Campos Are Combating Fraud
Market research companies like Campos are actively implementing multi-layered strategies to ensure data integrity from the ground up. At Campos, our measures include:
- Rigorous Panel Partner Management: The foundation of quality data is a verified and engaged respondent panel. Campos exclusively works with trusted panel providers with stringent verification processes. This often includes cross-referencing respondent information with third-party databases and using two-step authentication. Before we ever work with a partner, we vet them to make sure they pass our quality standards.
- Advanced Technological Solutions: We leverage technology to identify suspicious, potentially fraudulent behavior. This includes analyzing paradata—information about how a survey was taken, such as completion time, device type, and mouse movements—to flag inconsistencies. We also strategically embed proprietary attention check questions within surveys. These questions are designed to identify participants who are not carefully reading the prompts and are instead answering randomly or automatically, a key sign of fraud.
- Human-Powered Validation: While we use advanced digital algorithms and AI to identify suspicious, potentially fraudulent behavior, the human element remains vital. Whether we are collecting quantitative or qualitative data, a real person at Campos manually “cleans” all data, checking for signs of fraud or low quality. We manually clean data while we field using a variety of methods, ensuring the final sample we use in our analysis is never contaminated by bad data.
- Continuous Monitoring: Fraudsters are constantly evolving their tactics. As a result, we are continuously updating our anti-fraud solutions and monitoring for new patterns of deception to stay one step ahead.
Using these and other methods, we routinely discard up to a third of all responses we initially collect for not meeting our quality standards.
How to Ensure You Avoid Market Research Fraud
If you’re preparing to partner with a market research firm, it’s critical to ask them what they will do to ensure all the data they collect is real and high quality. If it’s not, nothing else matters! Here are some questions you can ask potential vendors:
- “How do you source your respondents?” A reliable vendor should be able to provide a transparent and detailed explanation of where they source quantitative and qualitative respondents from, and provide details about how they chose a particular sample provider.
- “What specific anti-fraud technologies and methods do you use?” Ask about their use of AI, for example, and metadata analysis. A quality provider will be able to articulate their specific tools and protocols.
- “Do you have a process for human-powered validation?” Inquire about their use of manual checks, as this can catch sophisticated fraud that automated systems may miss. This kind of validation is time consuming, but it’s completely essential to producing clean datasets.
- “How are fraudulent responses handled, and at what stage are they removed?” Ensure the vendor has robust protocols to remove fraudulent data before it contaminates the final analysis.
- “How do you ensure data security and privacy for participants?” Beyond fraud, a good market research partner will have clear protocols for data protection, adhering to industry guidelines and privacy laws.
Want to learn more about market research fraud and what we’re doing to combat it? Reach out here.
