The Role of Social Networking Sites in Medical Genetics Research

Reaves, Allison C; Bianchi, Diana W.

doi:10.1002/ajmg.a.35903

Cited by 29 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 20 publications

(49 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As proposed by Hefler et al, social media strategies may be integrated into tobacco control organizations [5]. Moreover, social media, such as Facebook, already include information about many disorders and genetic syndromes [6]. …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communicating Genetics and Smoking Through Social Media: Are We There Yet?

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundSocial media is a recent source of health information that could disseminate new scientific research, such as the genetics of smoking.ObjectiveThe objectives were (1) to evaluate the availability of genetic information about smoking on different social media platforms (ie, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter) and (2) to assess the type and the content of the information displayed on the social media as well as the profile of people publishing this information.MethodsWe screened posts on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter with the terms “smoking” and “genetic” at two time points (September 18, 2012, and May 7, 2013). The first 100 posts were reviewed for each media for the time points. Google was searched during Time 2 as an indicator of available information on the Web and the other social media that discussed genetics and smoking. The source of information, the country of the publisher, characteristics of the posts, and content of the posts were extracted.ResultsOn YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, 31, 0, and 84 posts, respectively, were included. Posts were mostly based on smoking-related diseases, referred to scientific publications, and were largely from the United States. From the Google search, most results were scientific databases. Six scientific publications referred to within the Google search were also retrieved on either YouTube or Twitter.ConclusionsDespite the importance of public understanding of smoking and genetics, and the high use of social media, little information on this topic is actually present on social media. Therefore, there is a need to monitor the information that is there and to evaluate the population’s understanding of the information related to genetics and smoking that is displayed on social media.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communicating Genetics and Smoking Through Social Media: Are We There Yet?

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…[14][15][16][17] The anonymity guaranteed by online surveys are of benefit if study topics are personal or taboo, such as questions on sexuality as in the case of HPV, where household or schoolbased recruitment strategies may be less favorable. 16,17 Recently, a study used Facebook to collect data on knowledge of HPV and cervical cancer among young women in Australia.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Samples recruited from social media networks tend to have an overrepresentation of females and younger adults. 15 One study, which compared traditional with online advertisement recruitment found that men, young adults, ethnic minorities, and a high school education or less were more likely to be recruited via online advertizing. 19 In the current study, we were able to adjust the targeting strategy based on an interim analysis of key characteristics, thereby optimizing the study sample composition; the focused targeting strategy applied during the second phase was successful in increasing the proportion of lower educated women and women with a migrant background.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, since approximately 80% of persons aged 14-29 y are using social networks, and Facebook in particular, 13,14 recruiting via this social network site might be a promising and inexpensive strategy. In fact, Facebook has already been used in different research settings, 15 and advertising has been shown to be effective in reaching young women 14 or addressing sensitive topics. 16,17 Recently, Gunasekaran et al conducted a survey on HPV knowledge among young women in Australia using targeted advertising on Facebook as a recruitment strategy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Knowledge, attitude, and uptake related to human papillomavirus vaccination among young women in Germany recruited via a social media site

Schmich¹,

Wetzstein²,

Deleré³

et al. 2014

vaccines

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Many industrialized countries have introduced human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination of young women, but vaccine uptake often remains suboptimal. This study aimed to investigate whether a social media site like Facebook is an appropriate tool to assess knowledge, attitude and uptake related to HPV vaccination in young women in Germany.Methods: Between December 2012 and January 2013 two different targeting strategies were implemented on Facebook, providing a link to an online questionnaire. Advertisements were displayed to female Facebook users aged 18-25 years living in Germany. During the simple targeting strategy, advertisements comprised health-related images along with various short titles and text messages. During the focused strategy, advertisements were targeted to users who in addition had certain fashion brands or pop stars listed on their profiles. The targeting strategies were compared with respect to participant characteristics. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to identify factors associated with HPV vaccine uptake.Results: A total of 1161 women participated. The two targeting strategies resulted in significant differences regarding educational status and migrant background. Overall, awareness of HPV was high, but only 53% received at least one vaccine dose. In multivariate analysis, HPV vaccine uptake was independently associated with a physician's recommendation and trust in vaccine effectiveness. Concerns of adverse effects were negatively associated with vaccine uptake.Discussion: Social network recruitment permits fast and convenient access to young people. Sample characteristics can be manipulated by adjusting targeting strategies. There is further need for promoting knowledge of HPV vaccination among young women. Physicians have a major role in the vaccination decision-making process of young women.

show abstract

“…due to an increase in exclusive use of mobile phones or email rather than traditional mail or landline phone. Opportunistic approaches such as recruitment via social media promise cost savings [4,[7][8][9][10][11][12] and a better coverage of person groups that are hard to reach with the traditional recruitment methods, like parents of adolescents [8], adolescents themselves [10], people with special conditions [13,14], smokers [15] or low-income people [16]. Social media, like Facebook and Twitter, can potentially have a strong snowballing effect [17] given their intensive use and continuing growth (around 1.94 billion monthly active Facebook users worldwide [26]), their feature that information can be shared very easily among networks [17], and are therefore able to reach a large number of people in a very short time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating different recruitment methods in a longitudinal survey: Findings from the pan-European PASTA project (Preprint)

Gaupp-Berghausen¹,

Raser²,

Anaya-Boig³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BACKGROUND Sufficient sample size and minimal sample bias are core requirements in empirical data analyses. Combining opportunistic recruitment with an online survey and data collection platform yields new benefits compared to traditional recruitment approaches. OBJECTIVE The objective of this paper is to report on the success of different recruitment methods to obtain participants’ characteristics, participation behavior, recruitment rates, and representativeness of the sample. METHODS A longitudinal online survey was implemented as part of the European PASTA project, which was online between November 2014 and December 2016. During this period participants in seven European cities were recruited on a rolling basis. For all cities to reach a sufficient number of adult participants a standardized guide on recruitment strategy was developed. In order to make use of the strengths and to minimize weakness a combination of different opportunistic recruitment methods was applied. In addition, the city of Oerebro applied random sampling approach. In order to reduce attrition rate and improve real-time monitoring the online platform featured a participant and a researchers` user interface and dashboard. RESULTS A total of 10,691 participants were recruited. Most people found out about the survey through their workplace or employer (21.5 %), outreach promotion (20.8 %), and social media (17.4 %). The average number of questionnaires filled-in per participant varied between the cities, with the highest number in Zurich (11.0 ± 0.33) and the lowest in Oerebro (4.8 ± 0.17). Collaboration with local organizations, the use of Facebook and mailing lists, and direct street recruitment were the most effective approaches in reaching a high share of participants (p = <.001). Under consideration of invested working hours Facebook (p = <.001) was one of the most time-efficient methods. Compared to the cities census data, the composition of study participants was broadly representative in terms of gender distribution, however included younger and better educated participants. CONCLUSIONS We observed that offering a mixed recruitment approach was very effective in achieving a high participation rate. The highest attrition rate and the lowest average number of questionnaires filled-in per participant were observed in Oerebro, who also recruited participants through random sampling. The findings suggest that people that are more interested in the topic are more willing to participate and to stay in a survey than those who are selected randomly and may not have a strong connection to the research topic. Whereas direct face-to-face contacts were very effective with respect to the number of recruited participants; recruiting people through social media was not only effective, but also very time-efficient. The collected data is based on one of the largest recruited longitudinal samples with a common recruitment strategy in different European cities.

show abstract

The Role of Social Networking Sites in Medical Genetics Research

Cited by 29 publications

References 20 publications

Communicating Genetics and Smoking Through Social Media: Are We There Yet?

Communicating Genetics and Smoking Through Social Media: Are We There Yet?

Knowledge, attitude, and uptake related to human papillomavirus vaccination among young women in Germany recruited via a social media site

Evaluating different recruitment methods in a longitudinal survey: Findings from the pan-European PASTA project (Preprint)

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About