Can Facebook Be Used for Research? Experiences Using Facebook to Recruit Pregnant Women for a Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

BackgroundRecruitment 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.ObjectiveTo 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.MethodsRecruitment 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.ResultsOf 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<.03).ConclusionsPaid Facebook advertisements hold promise as a platform for reaching pregnant women. The relative ease of placing an advertisement, the comparable cost per participant recruited, and the dramatically improved recruitment rates in comparison with traditional approaches highlight the importance of combining novel and traditional recruitment approaches to recruit women for pregnancy-related studies.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT02711644; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02711644 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6kKpagpMk)

Facebook Advertising to Recruit Young, Urban Women into an HIV Prevention Clinical Trial

“…Although nearly twice as many African American or Black women screened online compared to on-the-ground, the percentage that screened, and screened in as high risk, was similar across on-the-ground and online platforms. Similarities in demographics across these platforms had also been found in a clinical trial to recruit women into prenatal care early in the pregnancy (7). The notable exception in that study, was that women recruited by Facebook were significantly earlier in their pregnancy than compared to on-the-ground.…”

“…One clicks on a Facebook ad and is sent to a secured study website to review the full flyer, having left the Facebook platform (3). The use of Facebook advertising for research and program delivery is growing (5, 7), but, as identified by Pederson & Kurz (8), remains a relatively new area that requires further research and guidance into sample representativeness, protections of human subjects, and validity of the data.…”

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

“…By comparison, recruitment via social media platforms, especially Facebook, may be faster, cheaper, and easier than traditional methods [11][12][13]. Among social media platforms, Facebook may be an especially important tool because it is the largest and most used, with a diverse base of users with detailed demographic profiles [13].…”

Using Facebook for Large-Scale Online Randomized Clinical Trial Recruitment: Effective Advertising Strategies (Preprint)

“…When we first began advertising on Facebook, the ratio of enrolled participants to clicks was much higher, but still not more than about 1%. Others have had similar experiences: Ramo and colleagues [10] converted 5875 clicks into 79 participants in an RCT for young adult smokers (1.3%), and Adam and colleagues [21] converted 1001 clicks into 45…”