Hi,
I held off responding on this issue before, but feel you may need to consider the following points:
1) As viva is not, nor should be an interrogation. Fintan Culwin and I debated the use of vivas in this way for the HEA and repeated it at the Int Plagiarism Conference a few years ago. I believe a video is available.
2) It would be extremely unprofessional and unethical for the student to be viva'd without being informed of the reason. A viva shouldn't be a fishing exercise.
3) To proceed against one allegation but not the other invites a complaint to the Ombudsman because you are being inconsistent. It should be perfectly possible to check data, especially from a questionnaire if: the forms are available, because the ticks, etc, can be compared; data has been gathered from a verifiable audience, who can be contacted; results can be analysed to determine falsification, but this needs a decent sample size.
4) If you are proceeding with an anonymous allegation, very unwise in my opinion, you again open yourselves to complaints of unfair practice. These can often be malicious in nature. All it would take during an unfair practice panel was for the nature of the allegation to come out, and with full disclosure it should, for the student to argue it was a malevolent accusation for the panel to have to throw the case out, or be subject to an appeal.
5) I believe the best practice would have been to respond to the anonymous accusers and say no action would be taken unless they came forward with how they became aware of the alleged mis practice, who they are, and their relationship with the student.
tl;dr I don't agree with either how you are proceeding, or some of the advice given.
Either way, I wish you luck. You'll need it.
Mike
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