QSIG Midday Talk: Impostor participants in qualitative research

This presentation by Angie Pitt, a PhD student at King’s College London, will explore the relatively new and sensitive phenomenon of impostor participants in qualitative research: those who fake or exaggerate their identities to take part in paid research. Angie is based at the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emergency Preparedness and Response, and will share her experiences from a recent qualitative study exploring adolescent attitudes to vaccines. In recruiting for this study, around 80% of potential participants were judged to be impostors, largely adults posing as teenagers. How do we know we’re finding genuine participants? Which platforms are more likely to attract imposters? And what does this mean for research ethics – are the implications different if inclusion criteria involve disclosing health or traumatic histories? After the presentation, we’ll open up a discussion where we invite other qualitative researchers with similar experiences to share their stories and concerns around this complex and challenging issue.

Angie is a PhD student at King’s College London. Following a 25-year career in media and youth outreach working for the BBC, The Guardian Foundation and Girlguiding, Angie returned to academia in 2021 prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the young people with whom she worked. Angie’s MSc in Psychology (Conversion) at the University of Surrey focused on health psychology and qualitative methods. Her research at the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emergency Preparedness and Response at King’s College London’s IoPPN explores adolescent perspectives on vaccinations and side effects, co-producing wherever possible with teenagers themselves.

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