The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Online Recruitment of Parents for Health-Related Focus Groups: Lessons Learned

Abstract

BackgroundWe describe our experiences with identifying and recruiting Ontario parents through the Internet, primarily, as well as other modes, for participation in focus groups about adding the influenza vaccine to school-based immunization programs.ObjectiveOur objectives were to assess participation rates with and without incentives and software restrictions. We also plan to examine study response patterns of unique and multiple submissions and assess efficiency of each online advertising mode.MethodsWe used social media, deal forum websites, online classified ads, conventional mass media, and email lists to invite parents of school-aged children from Ontario, Canada to complete an online questionnaire to determine eligibility for focus groups. We compared responses and paradata when an incentive was provided and there were no software restrictions to the questionnaire (Period 1) to a period when only a single submission per Internet protocol (IP) address (ie, software restrictions invoked) was permitted and no incentive was provided (Period 2). We also compared the median time to complete a questionnaire, response patterns, and percentage of missing data between questionnaires classified as multiple submissions from the same Internet protocol (IP) address or email versus unique submissions. Efficiency was calculated as the total number of hours study personnel devoted to an advertising mode divided by the resultant number of unique eligible completed questionnaires .ResultsOf 1346 submitted questionnaires, 223 (16.6%) were incomplete and 34 (2.52%) did not meet the initial eligibility criteria. Of the remaining 1089 questionnaires, 246 (22.6%) were not from Ontario based on IP address and postal code, and 469 (43.1%) were submitted from the same IP address or email address (multiple submissions). In Period 2 vs Period 1, a larger proportion of questionnaires were submitted from Ontario (92.8%, 141/152 vs 75.1%, 702/937, P<.001), and a smaller proportion of same IP addresses (7.9%, 12/152 vs 47.1%, 441/937, P<.001) were received. Compared to those who made unique submissions, those who made multiple submissions spent less time per questionnaire (166 vs 215 seconds, P<.001), and had a higher percentage of missing data among their responses (15.0% vs 7.6%, P=.004). Advertisements posted on RedFlagDeals were the most efficient for recruitment (0.03 hours of staff time per questionnaire), whereas those placed on Twitter were the least efficient (3.64 hours of staff time per questionnaire).ConclusionsUsing multiple online advertising strategies was effective for recruiting a large sample of participants in a relatively short period time with minimal resources. However, risks such as multiple submissions and potentially fraudulent information need to be considered. In our study, these problems were associated with providing an incentive for responding, and could have been partially avoided by activating restrictive software features for online questionnaires.

The Use of Social Media in Recruitment for Medical Research Studies: A Scoping Review

“…In further sections of this paper, the article by Head et al [35] is counted as a single article or 2 articles, according to whether the conclusions from the 2 studies pertinent to the outcomes of this paper are the same or different. Out of 30 studies, 12 studies (40%) reported higher rates of recruitment through social media as compared with any of the other methods used [14-17,26,28,31,32,35, 36,41,42] and 15 studies (50%) reported recruitment via social media to be less effective than at least one other method used [18-21,23-25, 27,33-35,37-40]. Heffner et al [20] and Rabin et al [24] found social media to be the least effective method out of multiple (>2) recruitment methods used.…”

“…Of the 15 studies that did not find social media to be the best method, 7 studies were interventional studies [18-21,24,25,40], whereas 8 were observational studies [23,27,33-35,37-39]. Of these studies, 3 studies specifically targeted young and middle-aged adults [24,25,40], 2 studies targeted adolescents [34,37], and 2 studies targeted older adults [35,41].…”

“…Among these, 13 studies targeted local regions within a country [15,18,22,23,26,27,30,33-35,37,40,42], 8 studies [14,19,28,31,35,38,39,41] targeted recruitment nationally, and 2 studies targeted recruitment internationally [16,36]. …”

“…There was a younger median age in 3 studies [15,20,42], and 1 study [18] had a much higher proportion of 18- to 30-year-olds recruited via social media (56% vs 18.8%). Quach et al [23], while not formally reporting demographics, noted that social media recruited younger individuals. Although not included in the demographic analysis, Yuan et al [17] also noted that the proportion of individuals aged 60+ years recruited through Facebook was lower than that for other age groups.…”

Interest in a Twitter-delivered weight loss program among women of childbearing age

“…As 70 % of the overweight or obese women in the sample who were not currently attempting weight loss reported that they were at least somewhat interested in a Twitterdelivered weight loss intervention, our study provides insights into interest among women who would benefit from weight loss (i.e., overweight and obese women), regardless of current motivation to lose weight. We did not confirm that respondents' IP addresses were unique, thus leaving open the possibility that women completed the survey more than once [48]. However, participants received no compensation for participation, thus reducing the likelihood of duplicate responses.…”