

Measuring and Managing Honesty Online - LogicX
http://blog.socialsci.com/measuring-and-managing-honesty-in-a-participa

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Shenglong
_And even if after all that, they still do? Its not going to be a
statistically significant proportion of users who participate in studies to
skew the results._

That's beautiful, and absolutely true. When I was younger, I remember
answering surveys for random offers. I was caught a few times by different
surveys for inconsistencies - although I wasn't told explicitly. To cope with
this, I drafted up several identities and thought through a backstory to each
character - personality, background, etc, which made it much easier to
remember details. Depending on what the survey was about, I just picked a
profile I felt a researcher would be looking for. Wasn't perfect, but had a
hugely high success rate. I doubt very many people will go to my length
though. When you start trying to passively filter people, and hit someone like
me - well, we see it as a challenge... for better or for worse.

An interesting note: I used one of these profiles far more than the others. As
a result, I remember walking home one day near midnight, and thinking "Geeze,
I'm 29 already... one more year until I'm 30 - and I still haven't done
anything I wanted to do." It didn't strike me until a minute or so later, that
I wasn't anywhere near 29, and it wasn't actually my birthday.

~~~
gwern
> "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."

\--Kurt Vonnegut

