Bots are getting smarter: Online survey data collection in the age of sophisticated AI
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2023-04-14
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In early summer of 2022, our team launched an online survey using SurveyMonkey to collect data about teen health in Hawai’i for a needs assessment being conducted in collaboration with the Hawaii State Department of Health. The survey was for teens and youth with special health care needs, as well as their parents/caregivers, and aimed to collect data about needs and barriers to their healthcare. We offered an incentive of a $20 gift card for participation to reach a few hundred families within the state of Hawai’i. We used flyers with QR code and asked community partners to share via listservs and social media. Within 12 hours of sharing information with community partners, we had over 1500 survey responses. A quick look revealed that the vast majority of the responses were from bots– automated programs designed to complete online surveys offering monetary incentives. In fact, only about 50 responses of 1500 appeared to be submitted by actual humans. We quickly shut down the survey, regrouped, and did some research on survey bots, which very recently have become sophisticated enough to bypass CAPTCHA safeguards. In this presentation, we will share about our experiences in developing strategies to filter out bot responses from datasets, our audit of survey platforms and our new platform-of-choice (REDCap), pre-emptive strategies to build safeguards, and facilitate a discussion on the implications for online data collection.
Description
2023 Symposium Caring for Data in Hawaiʻi Presentation
Keywords
data management, Surveys and Questionnaires
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20 minutes
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Video
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