Webinar - New Advanced Tools for Identifying and Removing Fraud from Qualitative Research

Can You Spot Fraud?

Fraudulent participants are clearing screeners, passing follow-up calls, and reaching fieldwork seats, even on studies run with specialized recruiters and trusted virtual platforms. This piece looks at a new advanced tool for identifying and removing them at the top of the recruiting funnel, before they ever reach a session. 

Shelly Lindley, Project Director at SMARInsights, has been running live projects on the itracks project management tool. She shares what it has changed about the quality of her recruits, the size of her over-recruit, and the last fifteen minutes before a group begins.

Qual stopped being the safe room

Dan Weber, President of itracks, opened the session by playing two videos from participants who had cleared the same screener. One was fraudulent and did not make it into the study, and the other was a participant he took and described as excellent. 

Nothing in their screener data separated them. The video did. 

For years, this has been a quantitative problem: bots, speeders, duplicate IPs, professional participants farming panels for incentives. Qualitative research felt protected, because a real person had to show up and be a person. 

That protection is gone. NORC at the University of Chicago reported in 2026 that fraud in qualitative research is accelerating, with VPN submissions, duplicate identities and AI-assisted responses now appearing in interviews and focus groups. Know Research, which investigated the problem by interviewing fraudulent participants directly, found the same pattern: bad actors infiltrating virtual fieldwork, most of them using VPNs to mask locations outside the markets they claimed. 

The economics explain why. Qualitative studies commonly pay $100, $150 and higher when you are recruiting professionals or business owners. As Dan put it, "It opens a window for people to try to get in. It's enticing to be able to earn that type of money in an hour, hour and a half." 

That is one of the best hourly rates available in the participant economy, and it sits inside the smallest samples in research.

Fraud in qualitative research, and why it matters 

Shelly has spent more than 30 years in qualitative research, from in-person groups recruited city by city, through bulletin board and text chat groups, to today's online video groups. She is also the person who answers the client when a project goes wrong.

• The over-recruit was the insurance policy. Before working with itracks, her team recruited 14 people, double confirmed, in order to seat 8 to 10. That is 14 recruiting fees and 14 incentives, whether or not those participants were used.
• The decisions happen with an audience. Participants join about fifteen minutes early. When self-reported gender, ethnicity or age does not match what is on screen, her team has only minutes to decide who stays, and the client sees every part of it.
• The damage outlasts the session. Poorly recruited participants change a client's view of the entire recruit, and of every other session on the project. They start asking who the sample provider was and what follow-ups were done.
• It does not stay in qual. If a client sees problems in a recruit where they can actually see the people, they begin wondering about the quantitative work, where they cannot see anyone at all.

The new advanced tool

Dan demonstrates the itracks project management tool built on a simple principle: verification belongs at the front of the recruit, not in the waiting room.

• Video articulation. Participants answer a question on camera. It confirms they are who they claim to be, that they can be understood, that they are comfortable on camera, and that their AV works.
• Text and email built into the recruit. More people screen calls from out-of-state numbers, so good participants get missed. Texting alongside email opens the conversation and shows there is a real organization on the other end.
• Technical checks before the session. itracks looks at where a participant is logging in from and whether they are routing through a VPN, which is how location fraud gets caught on market-specific studies.
• One workspace for the whole recruit. Approvals update the quota grid live, multiple recruiters can work the same study with PII masked between them, and it runs alongside Zoom and Teams rather than replacing them.

Shelly shares what changed on her own projects, including participants who disappear when asked to record a video, show rates now running at 95 to 96 percent, and a moderator who walks into the session without having spent the previous fifteen minutes sorting out strangers.

What it looks like in practice 

Shelly's team has been using the tool on live projects, and the change shows up in a few places.

"Most people, if they are not legit, they don't leave a video. They don't want to leave a video, because they know they're caught."

That self-selection is doing real work before anyone reviews a single recording.

Show rates through this process now run 95 to 96 percent, which changes the recruiting math. When you can confirm who is real before you invite them, you stop over-recruiting to cover uncertainty, and you stop paying incentives to participants you were never going to seat.

"It's the hours you save, but also the money you save, because you're not over-recruiting, you're not paying out those additional incentives."

Questions about participant verification or fraud prevention on your next study? Contact us!

This post draws on insights from itracks' New Advanced Tools for Identifying and Removing Fraud from Qualitative Research. Watch the full conversation on YouTube. Check out the webinar recording on YouTube (search for “New Advanced Tools for Identifying and Removing Fraud from Qualitative Research”).