Using Facebook to Recruit Young Adult Veterans: Online Mental Health Research

Abstract

BackgroundVeteran research has primarily been conducted with clinical samples and those already involved in health care systems, but much is to be learned about veterans in the community. Facebook is a novel yet largely unexplored avenue for recruiting veteran participants for epidemiological and clinical studies.ObjectiveIn this study, we utilized Facebook to recruit a sample of young adult veterans for the first phase of an online alcohol intervention study. We describe the successful Facebook recruitment process, including data collection from over 1000 veteran participants in approximately 3 weeks, procedures to verify participation eligibility, and comparison of our sample with nationally available norms.MethodsParticipants were young adult veterans aged 18-34 recruited through Facebook as part of a large study to document normative drinking behavior among a large community sample of veterans. Facebook ads were targeted toward young veterans to collect information on demographics and military characteristics, health behaviors, mental health, and health care utilization.ResultsWe obtained a sample of 1023 verified veteran participants over a period of 24 days for the advertising price of approximately US $7.05 per verified veteran participant. Our recruitment strategy yielded a sample similar to the US population of young adult veterans in most demographic areas except for race/ethnicity and previous branch of service, which when we weighted the sample on race/ethnicity and branch a sample better matched with the population data was obtained. The Facebook sample recruited veterans who were engaged in a variety of risky health behaviors such as binge drinking and marijuana use. One fourth of veterans had never since discharge been to an appointment for physical health care and about half had attended an appointment for service compensation review. Only half had attended any appointment for a mental health concern at any clinic or hospital. Despite more than half screening positive for current probable mental health disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, only about 1 in 3 received mental health care in the past year and only 1 in 50 received such care within the past month.ConclusionsThis work expands on the work of other studies that have examined clinical samples of veterans only and suggests Facebook can be an adequate method of obtaining samples of veterans in need of care.Trial RegistrationClinicaltrials.gov NCT02187887; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02187887 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6YiUKRsXY).

Reaching Those At Risk for Psychiatric Disorders and Suicidal Ideation: Facebook Advertisements to Recruit Military Veterans (Preprint)

“…To be eligible, individuals needed to be age 18 or older, and on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces after September 2001 but not presently. We excluded individuals who completed surveys in less than five minutes, had more than one survey response, or incorrectly answered a military-related 'insider knowledge' question (to reduce chance of online survey misrepresentation) [19,27]. Survey completion was defined as those respondents who reached the end of the online survey and were not excluded based on the above quality control measures.…”

“…Facebook ads have been used effectively in populations including college students and young adults [16,17] and military veterans (particularly those with risky drinking) [18][19][20][21]. Prior research has also suggested ad campaigns can achieve both "broad reach and targeted recruitment," and found ad costs to be manageable [19].…”

“…Prior research has also suggested ad campaigns can achieve both "broad reach and targeted recruitment," and found ad costs to be manageable [19]. (Throughout this paper, we use the term "reach" to mean even a minimal amount of engagement with an ad, not necessarily engagement in health care, a definition that is consistent with the vein in which it is used in social media contexts.)…”

“…Nonetheless, much work remains in the development of best practices and evidence-based recruitment strategies on social media. Studies, with rare exception [22], have yet to conduct experiments comparing particular Facebook advertising approaches, images or text [17,19,[23][24][25][26]. Examination of a spectrum of potential outcomes, ranging from general exposure (e.g., "impressions") to initial interaction (e.g., link clicks) to implementation (e.g., enrollment in a research study) [26], would also be helpful in social media studies.…”

Improving Utilization of and Adherence to Treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Among U.S. Servicemembers and Veterans

“…The final sample included 812 veterans aged 19-34 who had previously served in the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marines or Navy (Pedersen et al, 2015). This sample excluded those who were still serving in the National Guard or Reserves.…”