TY  - JOUR
AU  - Dewitt, James
AU  - Capistrant, Benjamin
AU  - Kohli, Nidhi
AU  - Rosser, B R Simon
AU  - Mitteldorf, Darryl
AU  - Merengwa, Enyinnaya
AU  - West, William
PY  - 2018
DA  - 2018/04/24
TI  - Addressing Participant Validity in a Small Internet Health Survey (The Restore Study): Protocol and Recommendations for Survey Response Validation
JO  - JMIR Res Protoc
SP  - e96
VL  - 7
IS  - 4
KW  - fraudulent data
KW  - data accuracy
KW  - research and design
KW  - research activities
KW  - data analysis
AB  - Background: While deduplication and cross-validation protocols have been recommended for large Web-based studies, protocols for survey response validation of smaller studies have not been published. Objective: This paper reports the challenges of survey validation inherent in a small Web-based health survey research. Methods: The subject population was North American, gay and bisexual, prostate cancer survivors, who represent an under-researched, hidden, difficult-to-recruit, minority-within-a-minority population. In 2015-2016, advertising on a large Web-based cancer survivor support network, using email and social media, yielded 478 completed surveys. Results: Our manual deduplication and cross-validation protocol identified 289 survey submissions (289/478, 60.4%) as likely spam, most stemming from advertising on social media. The basic components of this deduplication and validation protocol are detailed. An unexpected challenge encountered was invalid survey responses evolving across the study period. This necessitated the static detection protocol be augmented with a dynamic one. Conclusions: Five recommendations for validation of Web-based samples, especially with smaller difficult-to-recruit populations, are detailed. 
SN  - 1929-0748
UR  - http://www.researchprotocols.org/2018/4/e96/
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/resprot.7655
UR  - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29691203
DO  - 10.2196/resprot.7655
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/resprot.7655
ER  -