Can Facebook Be Used for Research? Experiences Using Facebook to Recruit Pregnant Women for a Randomized Controlled Trial
| Autor: | Donna Manca, Laura M. Adam, Rhonda C. Bell |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
medicine.medical_specialty
020205 medical informatics social media education Health Informatics 02 engineering and technology maternal health law.invention World Wide Web 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Randomized controlled trial law 0202 electrical engineering electronic engineering information engineering Medicine Maternal health Social media 030212 general & internal medicine Recruitment methods Trial registration Screening call Original Paper Internet business.industry Family medicine The Internet Human research business pregnant women |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Medical Internet Research |
| ISSN: | 1438-8871 1439-4456 |
| Popis: | Background: Recruitment is often a difficult and costly part of any human research study. Social media and other emerging means of mass communication hold promise as means to complement traditional strategies used for recruiting participants because they can reach a large number of people in a short amount of time. With the ability to target a specified audience, paid Facebook advertisements have potential to reach future research participants of a specific demographic. This paper describes the experiences of a randomized controlled trial in Edmonton, Alberta, attempting to recruit healthy pregnant women between 8 and 20 weeks’ gestation for participation in a prenatal study. Various traditional recruitment approaches, in addition to paid Facebook advertisements were trialed. Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of paid advertisements on Facebook as a platform for recruiting pregnant women to a randomized controlled trial in comparison with traditional recruitment approaches. Methods: Recruitment using traditional approaches occurred for 7 months, whereas Facebook advertisements ran for a total of 26 days. Interested women were prompted to contact the study staff for a screening call to determine study eligibility. Costs associated with each recruitment approach were recorded and used to calculate the cost to recruit eligible participants. Performance of Facebook advertisements was monitored using Facebook Ads Manager. Results: Of the 115 women included, 39.1% (n=45) of the women who contacted study staff heard about the study through Facebook, whereas 60.9% (n=70) of them heard about it through traditional recruitment approaches. During the 215 days (~7 months) that the traditional approaches were used, the average rate of interest was 0.3 (0.2) women/day, whereas the 26 days of Facebook advertisements resulted in an average rate of interest of 2.8 (1.7) women/day. Facebook advertisements cost Can $506.91 with a cost per eligible participant of Cad $20.28. In comparison, the traditional approaches cost Cad $1087, with approximately Cad $24.15 per eligible participant. Demographic characteristics of women were similar between the 2 recruitment methods except that women recruited using Facebook were significantly earlier in their pregnancy than those recruited using traditional approaches (P |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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