Answering a survey by pretending to be someone else is clearly unacceptable and fraud by the student if they encouraged others to do it. I’m pretty sure that wo

Answering a survey by pretending to be someone else is clearly unacceptable and fraud by the student if they encouraged others to do it. I’m pretty sure that would lead to that student failing the class or worse if it were discovered where I study. The same is (even more) true for faking data. That’s a disgusting violation of all scientific standards. For any somewhat larger project that might yield actual useful data our teachers are usually also involved to a degree where they would know if something like that is going on to a massive degree. It is also standard practice to disguise these kinds of filter questions in surveys and to leave possible respondents in the dark about the ultimate purpose of the survey (insofar as that is possible and it isn’t ethically necessary to be transparent about certain aspects). That way respondents outside the filter criteria hopefully couldn’t participate even if they wanted to fake their way in. The way I do it, no one besides my advisor and a limited pool of pre-testers (who I make sure to tell not to participate in the main survey – and I also try to keep the link to the survey away from them) knows what the survey is about and what are the filter criteria. That’s students. Most of them won’t go on to do any actual worthwhile research that will ever be cited by anyone. I would hope that the standards are even higher for research that’s published in journals. Social research is tough even if everyone behaves ethically. No doubt about that. But I have never encountered any culture of fraudulent behaviour outside of lazy students who will never publish anything anyone cares for.