Re‐Thinking the Imposter Participant: Online Research Methods, Ethics, AI and Trust.
Imposter participants are participants who falsely claim to meet inclusion criteria. They are an increasingly recognised issue in the interdisciplinary methods literature, an issue which has been exacerbated by the development of online research methods. This existing work recognises imposter partic...
| Publicado en: | Area (0004-0894) Vol. 58; no. 2; pp. 1 - 8 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Wiley-Blackwell
Jun2026
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=194916420&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 194916420 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00040894 D7Y jtl: Area (0004-0894) issn: 00040894 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Jun2026 vid: 58 iid: 2 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell artinfo: ui: 194916420 10.1111/area.70123 ppf: 1 ppct: 7 formats: tig: atl: Re‐Thinking the Imposter Participant: Online Research Methods, Ethics, AI and Trust. aug: au: Cranston, Sophie Mills, Sarah Cant, Rosanna Moore, Ellie Maidment, David Nooh, Masa affil: Geography and Environment, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK Communications and Media, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK su: Research ethics Power (Social sciences) Human research subjects Research integrity Generative artificial intelligence Internet research sug: subj: Research ethics Power (Social sciences) Human research subjects Research integrity Generative artificial intelligence Internet research keyword: ethics imposter participants inequalities online research trust ethics imposter participants inequalities online research trust ab: Imposter participants are participants who falsely claim to meet inclusion criteria. They are an increasingly recognised issue in the interdisciplinary methods literature, an issue which has been exacerbated by the development of online research methods. This existing work recognises imposter participants as a frustration in the research process and provides important interventions that raise awareness and provide strategies of detection and prevention. However, this paper flips the dominant narrative in academia on fraudulent, imposter or 'fake' participants. Drawing on the authors' experience of imposter participants and Generative AI in online methods, this paper provides a series of ethical arguments around incentives, trust and power imbalances. The paper provides a critical lens through which to examine wider questions of trust in online research, making wider contributions to debates on research methods and ethics. Indeed, the paper argues that imposter participants raise urgent questions, not just for the validity and research integrity of individual projects, but for revealing wider structural inequalities and how to potentially navigate this going forward. This paper flips the dominant narrative in academia on fraudulent or imposter participants by providing a series of ethical arguments around incentives, trust and power imbalances in online research. The paper argues that the potential of imposter participants in online research raises urgent questions around wider structural inequalities which researchers need to be attuned to. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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