Brief Overview

Most reputable study platforms, such as Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey, already provide some��detection and protection features from online bots. If additional protections are needed for online��bots and survey speeders, the summary below are some recommendations and tools on how��you can protect your online survey. Additional protections can include designing a survey to��catch bots and speeders or using different technology resources to filter out bots.

Survey Design

• Add questions that check whether a survey taker is actually paying attention. For��example, insert the instruction “Ignore the rest of the content of this passage and select��the second response option” in a long question. Those who select anything other than��the second option would then be flagged.
• Ask the same question at two separate points and check for differences in responses.
• Add questions that direct survey takers to skip one or more questions that are not��applicable to their circumstances. Those who did not skip questions would be flagged.
• Embed eligibility question checks within the survey to catch people who do not fit into��your inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Use Technology

• Prevent “ballot-stuffing” by tracking IP addresses to prevent your survey from being��completed more than once from the same IP address.
• Provide a personal link for each participant to the survey and ensure the link can only be��used once.
• Use Completely Automated Public turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart��(CAPTCHA) or reCAPTCHA to prevent bot response.
• Include “honeypot” questions that are embedded in the survey. Human participants will��not be able to see these questions; however, bots would see these questions and��respond to them.
• Use metadata to track study time stamps for impossible dates and times.
• Prevent search engines from finding/indexing your survey. Search engines work by��creating what is called an index, or a map of all pages on the internet so they can be��searched quickly. With the prevent indexing option, you can keep search engines from��finding your survey and presenting it in their search results. If your survey is created��using��Qualtrics, for example, the prevent indexing is selected by default under the��survey options.
• Conduct a pre-screening survey prior to launching your survey, in order to filter out bots.
• Put the survey on a site that requires a unique username and password for each��participant

References and Tools

Image Credit: broken NEC CRT computer monitor by youngthousands��(via Wikimedia Commons)��