Randomized controlled trial of plain English and visual abstracts for disseminating surgical research via social media

Abstract

Background: Patients are increasingly taking an active role in the design and delivery of surgical research. Public communication of results should also be encouraged, but this is often limited to non-expert commentary. This study assessed the role of plain English abstracts disseminated via social media in engaging patients and clinicians in the communication of surgical research.Methods: A three-arm randomized controlled trial with crossover of two intervention arms was performed. Manuscripts accepted for publication in BJS were allocated to one of three arms and disseminated via Twitter: plain English abstracts, visual abstracts and standard tweets. The primary outcome was online engagement (a composite of tweets, replies and likes) by members of the public within 14 days. The secondary outcome was online engagement by healthcare professionals. 1⋅8 (range 0-8), 2⋅5 (0-11), and 1⋅2 (0-4) for plain English abstracts, visual abstracts and standard tweets respectively. The mean number of engagements by healthcare professionals was 29⋅4 (6-66), 45⋅3 (6-161) and 28⋅8 (10-52) respectively. Overall, visual abstracts attracted a significantly greater number of engagements than plain English ones (P < 0⋅001). Results: Forty-one manuscripts were randomized to plain English abstracts (14), visual abstracts (14) and standard tweets (13). The number of public engagements was low, with a mean ofConclusion: Online, public engagement with surgical research was low. Overall engagement (predominantly from healthcare professionals) was enhanced by the use of visual abstracts.

Beyond Journals—Visual Abstracts Promote Wider Suicide Prevention Research Dissemination and Engagement: A Randomized Crossover Trial

“…Prior studies showed significant positive effects of visual abstracts to increase engagement within specific academic fields [e.g., surgery (Ibrahim et al, 2017 ; Chapman et al, 2019 ), geriatrics (Lindquist and Ramirez-Zohfeld, 2019 )]. Research designs to test their impact include retrospective cross-sectional evaluation (Koo et al, 2019 ), as well as more rigorous randomized prospective approaches (Ibrahim et al, 2017 ; Chapman et al, 2019 ). In the landmark study testing visual abstracts, Ibrahim et al ( 2017 ) conducted a prospective case-control crossover study of Annals of Surgery publications (Ibrahim et al, 2017 ).…”

Social media in surgery: evolving role in research communication and beyond

“…Recent research suggests that sharing a traditional journal article on social media increases attention and downloads [ 66 ]. This can be facilitated in many ways, including discussing the study in a blog [ 66 ], posting short tweets, or sharing visual abstracts, images that summarize the main findings in a research paper [ 63 – 65 , 67 ]. The latter has shown to increase attention to the study results in an appealing way with increased distribution and downloads as a result [ 62 ].…”

Tweets of the month

“…Lastly, the visual abstract of the RCT of plain English and visual abstracts for disseminating surgical research via social media by Chapman et al 7 generated more than 6070 impressions and 139 interactions, supporting the importance of producing visual information to increase the reach of research outputs on social media.…”