Fraudulent research participation guidance

At Healthwatch, we want to hear from people about their lived experiences. Hearing from people with direct experiences of health and care allows us to build a picture of whether the provision of health and care across England works for people, and highlight when it doesn’t.

Fraudulent research participation is problematic because it can undermine data integrity and distort our findings. It also increases workload by requiring verification of the identity of potential participants and additional checks on the data we collect to ensure its validity.

This guidance outlines strategies for minimising fraudulent research participation and identifying suspicious or fraudulent research data in surveys, interviews and focus groups.