Facebook Recruitment for Children with Advanced Cancer and Their Parents: Lessons from a Web-based Pediatric Palliative Intervention Study

Abstract

Participant recruitment for pediatric palliative intervention studies is a chronic challenge for researchers. Digital recruitment strategies, or digital technology-assisted recruitment methods used to remotely reach and enroll research subjects, can help address these recruitment challenges for pediatric palliative care clinical trials. This study (a) describes Facebook recruitment procedures targeting children with cancer and their parents for a pediatric palliative intervention randomized clinical trial, (b) reports recruitment results, and (c) discusses successful strategies to recruit pediatric populations via Facebook advertisements. Researchers used Facebook advertisements to recruit children with advanced cancer (aged 7-17 years) for a web-based legacy intervention. Between years 2015 and 2018, our research team enrolled 150 child-parent dyads (N = 300) to participate in the web-based legacy program. Results suggest that Facebook advertisements can be a successful tool to access and recruit pediatric populations with life-threatening conditions. Further research is needed to determine how innovative social-media recruitment strategies could be used in other populations of patients with serious illnesses and their caregivers to further advance the science in palliative care.

Ethical Considerations in Oncology and Palliative Care Research During COVID-19

“…Innovative research advertising procedures have been successfully used to remotely recruit pediatric palliative care populations ( Akard et al, 2015a ; Akard et al, 2016 ; Cho et al, 2021 ). Remote recruitment strategies can include advertisements through listservs, social media, or paid online services (e.g., Cloud Research).…”

“…Our recently completed R01 (Grant number R01NR015353, PI: Akard) is an example of a palliative care study that successfully used remote recruitment strategies prior to the pandemic ( Akard et al, 2020 ; Cho et al, 2021 ). In this study, the research team conducted a remote randomized clinical trial to test the effects of a web-based legacy intervention for children with advanced cancer and their parents.…”

Facebook recruitment for research of children and parents during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Regardless, rates in these studies are considerably lower than traditional recruitment methods that range from $13.12 to $250.00 ( Carlini et al, 2015 ). Low costs in our study could have been due in part to the broad inclusion criteria targeting a healthy child-parent population, as opposed to vulnerable hard to reach populations that typically have higher costs ( Cho et al, 2021 ). Thus, target population is an important consideration to determine if Facebook recruitment is a cost-effective recruitment strategy.…”

“…Facebook advertisements have been a time-efficient and cost-effective recruitment method for other populations ( Cho et al, 2021 ; Desroches, 2020 ; Foster Akard et al, 2016 ; Reagan et al, 2019 ). However, research on the feasibility of recruiting children as study participants, via parents on Facebook and other social media platforms, remains limited.…”

“… Akard et al (2015) established that Facebook is also effective in recruiting parents for research. Subsequent research illustrated the viability of utilizing Facebook for recruitment of parent-child dyads ( Cho et al, 2021 ; Foster Akard et al, 2016 ). Although an emerging area, few papers describe the feasibility and how to use social media for recruitment.…”