Addressing Participant Validity in a Small Internet Health Survey (The Restore Study): Protocol and Recommendations for Survey Response Validation.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:While deduplication and cross-validation protocols have been recommended for large Web-based studies, protocols for survey response validation of smaller studies have not been published. OBJECTIVE:This paper reports the challenges of survey validation inherent in a small Web-based health survey research. METHODS:The subject population was North American, gay and bisexual, prostate cancer survivors, who represent an under-researched, hidden, difficult-to-recruit, minority-within-a-minority population. In 2015-2016, advertising on a large Web-based cancer survivor support network, using email and social media, yielded 478 completed surveys. RESULTS:Our manual deduplication and cross-validation protocol identified 289 survey submissions (289/478, 60.4%) as likely spam, most stemmin

SUBMITTER: Dewitt J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5941092 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature