The Cost of Overclaiming

How Bad Data Slips Into Good Research

Respondents often exaggerate — whether to qualify for incentives, appear more knowledgeable, or simply because memory is unreliable. For market research, these inflated claims skew results, misinform decisions, and erode client trust.

Why Overclaiming Happens?

Overclaiming occurs when survey respondents stretch the truth about their experiences, behaviors, or expertise. It happens for several reasons:

• Qualifying for incentives: Exaggerating to meet screening criteria for paid studies

• Social desirability bias: Wanting to appear more knowledgeable or successful

• Memory errors: Imperfect recall leading to inflated claims

A recent report stated that researchers discard an average of 38% of collected data due to quality concerns or panel fraud (Qrious Insight, 2024). And while 80% of people say they provide truthful answers to surveys, this drops to just 66% when questions become personal (SurveyLegend, 2021).

The Business Impact

Consider these common overclaiming scenarios:

• Employment Claims: A Marketing Coordinator claims to be a "Senior Marketing Manager," or exaggerates company size and seniority level.

• Media Consumption: People often overstate how often they watch documentaries or specific sports, or claim to follow certain influencers to appear more culturally relevant.

• Travel Behavior: Inflating travel frequency or claiming destinations never visited to qualify for travel studies or appear more cosmopolitan.

• Professional Skills: Overstating expertise in trending areas like AI or digital marketing to seem more qualified.

Why Traditional Checks Fall Short

Survey platforms have spent years improving fraud detection by blocking duplicate IPs, using attention checks and flagging straight-lining. But a respondent who carefully reads questions and provides thoughtful (but exaggerated) answers will sail through these checks. 

This is where market research needs to evolve and start validating answers against real-world data.

A New Approach: Validating Against Real Data

This is where data portability creates a new opportunity for research. With user consent, individuals can export their personal data directly from platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, Booking.com, Google, and Amazon.

That means a survey claim can be cross-checked against real-world records:

• Employment Verification: Verify employment history against LinkedIn profiles. Check tenure, job titles and company size against actual profile data. If someone claims "Senior Marketing Manager" but LinkedIn shows "Marketing Assistant," that's a red flag.

• Media Consumption Validation: Cross-reference claimed viewing habits with YouTube watch history. If a respondent claims to follow tech reviewers but their watch history shows only entertainment content, their tech product opinions may be less valuable.

• Travel Behavior Confirmation: Validate claimed travel frequency and destinations against booking platform data and location history. 

• Skills and Interest Authentication: Compare claimed professional skills with LinkedIn endorsements, courses completed, and work experience. 

• Purchase History Cross-Checking: Verify actual purchase behavior against claimed behavior—the holy grail of consumer research that will revolutionize understanding of brand loyalty and preferences.

Cleaner Panels, Stronger Insights

For research leaders, this shift means:

• Higher panel integrity — verifying that respondents are who they say they are.

• Reduced noise — filtering out exaggerations that dilute findings.

• Richer profiles — pre-filling validated data so you ask fewer (and better) questions.

• Protected budgets — avoiding wasted spend on unreliable answers.

Market research is built on trust between panels and providers. Overclaiming quietly chips away at that foundation. By validating claims against real-world data, we can restore confidence in survey data, strengthen our industry’s credibility, and deliver insights that actually mean something.

If you’re wrestling with respondent quality, feel free to reach out on omar@supermarketer.co.uk. Let’s set up a conversation.