Mitigating Fraud in Incentivized Online Surveys: Lessons from Facebook Recruitment in Nigeria

In this paper we document our experience with conducting the Perceptions of Inequality and Redistribution Survey (PIRS), which is an online, multi-round survey conducted among Nigerian adults who were recruited via a Facebook ad campaign. The paper discusses our initial and unsuccessful recruitment strategy as well as our subsequent revised strategy in which we were able to effectively address the problems and pitfalls which caused our initial recruitment strategy to be unsuccessful. By discussing both strategies in detail, we provide original methodological and practical insights into how best to conduct online surveys with compensation in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with the help of a Facebook ad campaign. On the basis of our experience with the PIRS in Nigeria, we provide several actionable recommendations to researchers who wish to use Facebook for generating a compensated online survey panel in both LMICs and higher income countries.