Web-Enabled Recruitment Strategies for Community-Dwelling Older Adults

Abstract

Older adults are vulnerable to experiencing the digital divide. Identifying effective web-enabled recruitment strategies to target older adults is an important research focus. Web-enabled recruitment strategies have become increasingly popular amidst virtual working environments due to unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, it is unclear which web-enabled recruitment strategies have been successful among older adults in community-based intervention trials. We describe lessons learned in using web-enabled strategies to recruit Korean American older adults with probable dementia and their caregivers in a community-based intervention trial and compare our findings with the web-enabled recruitment strategies targeting older adults reported in relevant published studies. Data sources included: study team meeting minutes, community consultant interviews, and a PubMed search. Five themes emerged: unfamiliarity with technology, differences in internet access across older age groups, providing technological support to promote recruitment, successful and unsuccessful recruitment using social media, and other diverse online methods of recruitment.