Who's cheating on your survey? A detection approach with digital trace data

Simon Munzert, Sebastian Ramirez-Ruiz, Pablo Barberá, Andrew M. Guess and JungHwan Yang

Political Science Research and Methods, 2024, vol. 12, issue 2, 390-398

Abstract: In this note, we provide direct evidence of cheating in online assessments of political knowledge. We combine survey responses with web tracking data of a German and a US online panel to assess whether people turn to external sources for answers. We observe item-level prevalence rates of cheating that range from 0 to 12 percent depending on question type and difficulty, and find that 23 percent of respondents engage in cheating at least once across waves. In the US panel, which employed a commitment pledge, we observe cheating behavior among less than 1 percent of respondents. We find robust respondent- and item-level characteristics associated with cheating. However, item-level instances of cheating are rare events; as such, they are difficult to predict and correct for without tracking data. Even so, our analyses comparing naive and cheating-corrected measures of political knowledge provide evidence that cheating does not substantially distort inferences.

Date: 2024
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