How to Handle Cheating
If your program allows manual entry or activity conversion, it's possible for members to enter step counts that don’t reflect their actual movement. But your program is also about inclusivity, which manual entry and activity conversion can help with!
While cheating is certainly a legitimate concern, we feel that the possibility of false results shouldn’t prevent a challenge from being a positive and inclusive experience for members. Below are some suggestions that we feel will encourage positive (and honest!) engagement.
Incentivize Participating, Not Leading
Incentivize honesty by rewarding for other criteria beyond first to finish or most steps. Incentivize for diligence (e.g., entering 42 days out of 50) or simply for signing up! This encourages participation while lowering the need to post artificially high step counts in the interest of being the highest score.
The Benefits of Manual Tracking
Turning manual entry off and only allowing automatic tracking may prevent some dishonesty, but it can create its own issues as well. We want to promote inclusion, and some members might not be able to afford devices necessary for automatic tracking. While there are available options for free step-tracking apps on smartphones, some members may not have smartphones. You don’t want to put up any barriers that might discourage members from moving and participating due to their inability to track activity or use smart technology. Moreover, offering this option is sometimes a necessity to make sure that a program complies with the law.
Encourage Journaling
The most direct way to dispel suspicion is to post proof of movement. Encourage members who convert activities to also post to their journal with pictures and a description of their activity or a picture of their device/app. Moreover, it reminds members that this is about showing each other how active they are and in what ways they can move. You can also separate rewards for steps only and then activities, since converting activities often results in a high step conversion and recording.
Remind Members What’s Important
Nothing you win in a walking challenge, no bragging rights for a high placement, is as important as someone’s health. No matter where you place in a challenge, the steps you take and the exercises you do have a real benefit that no step total can compare to. Your goal is to help everyone get more active and healthier. If another member enters a total in dishonesty, they’re only truly cheating themselves. Remind members that their first focus should be the positive things they’re doing for themselves, not what anyone else’s statistics are or what is shown on the leadership board!
Takeaway Points
We’ve tried multiple ways to curtail dishonesty within manual entry and activity conversion, and we have often found that attempts to be strict in this issue are more discouraging than helpful. We’ve also found that people who were assumed to be cheating were actually pushing themselves to new heights of fitness, and so it’s often best to avoid the risk of accusing the non-guilty and use alternate methods to discourage cheating.
Does dishonesty exist? Of course it does. The true antidote to dishonesty is your own honesty. Aim for transparency and multiple criteria for incentives to encourage the best possible experience for all your members!