Modeling the probability of fraud in social media in a national cannabis survey

Abstract

Cannabis legalization has spread rapidly in the United States. Although national surveys provide robust information on the prevalence of cannabis use, cannabis disorders, and related outcomes, information on knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs (KABs) about cannabis is lacking. To inform the relationship between cannabis legalization and cannabis-related KABs, RTI International launched the National Cannabis Climate Survey (NCCS) in 2016. The survey sampled US residents 18 years or older via mail (n = 2,102), mail-to-web (n = 1,046), and two social media data collections (n = 11,957). This report outlines two techniques that we used to problem-solve several challenges with the resulting data: (1) developing a model for detecting fraudulent cases in social media completes after standard fraud detection measures were insufficient and (2) designing a weighting scheme to pool multiple probability and nonprobability samples. We also describe our approach for validating the pooled dataset. The fraud prevention and detection processes, predictive model of fraud, and the methods used to weight the probability and nonprobability samples can be applied to current and future complex data collections and analysis of existing datasets.