Using the Facebook Advertisement Platform to Recruit Chinese, Korean, and Latinx Cancer Survivors for Psychosocial Research: Web-Based Survey Study

Abstract

BackgroundEthnic minority cancer survivors remain an understudied and underrepresented population in cancer research, in part, due to the challenge of low participant recruitment rates. Therefore, identifying effective recruitment strategies is imperative for reducing cancer health disparities among this population. With the widespread use of social media, health researchers have turned to Facebook as a potential source of recruitment.ObjectiveWe aimed to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of purchasing ads on Facebook to recruit Chinese, Korean, and Latinx cancer survivors residing in the United States. We assessed their experience with participating in a Web-based survey and their interest for future research.MethodsWe showed 5 purchased ads in English, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Korean, and Spanish on Facebook. Participants who clicked on the Facebook ad were directed to the study website and asked to submit their emails to receive the link to the 30-minute Web-based survey. Inclusion criteria included being of Asian or Latinx heritage, age ≥18 years, having a cancer diagnosis, and being within 5 years of cancer treatment. Participants who completed the survey were sent a US $10 Walmart eGiftcard.ResultsThe Facebook ads were shown for 48 consecutive days for a total spending of US $1200.46 (US $25/day budget). Overall, 11 East Asian and 15 Latinx cancer survivors completed the study, resulting in an average cost per participant of US $46.17. The East Asian and Latinx cancer survivors did not significantly differ in age, years lived in the United States, education level, generation status, and time since diagnosis. However, Latinx cancer survivors were marginally more likely to have limited English proficiency and lower annual income than East Asian cancer survivors. Both Latinx and East Asian cancer survivors reported that they enjoyed participating in this study and indicated an interest in participating in future psychosocial research studies.ConclusionsThe use of Facebook ads successfully resulted in the recruitment of East Asian and Latinx cancer survivors with different cancer diagnoses who reside in various geographic regions of the United States. We found that East Asian and Latinx cancer survivors recruited through Facebook were interested in participating in future psychosocial research, thereby providing support for the feasibility and effectiveness of using Facebook as a source of recruitment for ethnic minority cancer survivors.

Youth Study Recruitment Using Paid Advertising on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook: Cross-Sectional Survey Study

“…Other Web-based health-related campaigns [5,23,24,29,30] demonstrated similar success in recruiting youth and young adults through Instagram and Facebook [13,22,31], although most cross-sectional studies used Facebook for recruitment [32]. In the first cross-sectional survey, the social media ads ran for 20 days and showed a total of 154,530 impressions and 3318 link clicks, across Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, and 618 completed surveys.…”

“…In the second cross-sectional survey, social media ads ran for 28 days and showed a total of 609,083 impressions and 2771 link clicks, across the same 3 platforms, and 210 completed surveys. A study using Facebook ads only for 48 days produced a total of 144,635 impressions, 2129 link clicks, and 26 completed surveys among an adult multiethnic population [29]. A study using Facebook and Instagram ads for 1 week to recruit and reach young adults at high risk for smoking reached 324,959 individual users and resulted in 7249 link clicks, 6661 screener completions, and 1709/3357 (50.90%, eligible) completed surveys [5].…”

“…Second, this evaluation offered unique contributions on how social media campaigns can use multiple platforms to maximize recruitment, reach, and engagement. Third, the study contributed to the literature by describing low-cost approaches for reaching young people using paid social media advertising [5,29,31].…”

Google AdWords and Facebook Ads for Recruitment of Pregnant Women into a Prospective Cohort Study With Long-Term Follow-Up

“…As study participants in general and hard-to-reach subgroups, such as pregnant women, in particular are challenging to recruit nowadays, targeted Facebook advertisements seem to gain popularity as a new method of recruitment for both observational (Arcia 2014; Harris et al 2015; Admon et al 2016; Christensen et al 2017; Fonseca and Canavarro 2017; Motoki et al 2017; Jordan et al 2018; Kerns et al 2018; Mengesha et al 2018) and experimental studies (Adam et al 2016; Laws et al 2016) within maternal and child health research. In other research areas, for example studies among men who have sex with men (Lachowsky et al 2016; Buckingham et al 2017), parents (Tustin et al 2017; Oesterle et al 2018), and cancer survivors (Juraschek et al 2018; Tsai et al 2019), online recruitment methods are also being applied successfully. However, Williamson et al (2018) failed to recruit pregnant women with asthma through Facebook and Twitter and pointed to the possibility of publication bias in the literature on online recruitment methods.…”

Recruiting participants for an international mHealth study via Facebook Ads: Experiences from the Untire App RCT

“…We used 76 Ads and explored which of the 18 texts and 16 images we had created worked best. The Facebook Ads Manager platform provides researchers with the ability to target variables like age, location, interests, and behaviors of those shown the Ads ( Tsai et al, 2019 ). Facebook Ads were first disseminated to target audiences with similar interests to those who are a member of Facebook groups/pages related to cancer and survivorship (e.g., ‘Cancer Awareness,’ or ‘MacMillan Cancer Support’).…”