Recruiting for health, medical or psychosocial research using Facebook: Systematic review

Abstract

Recruiting participants is a challenge for many health, medical and psychosocial research projects. One tool more frequently being used to improve recruitment is the social networking website Facebook. A systematic review was conducted to identify studies that have used Facebook to recruit participants of all ages, to any psychosocial, health or medical research. 110 unique studies that used Facebook as a recruitment source were included in the review. The majority of studies used a cross-sectional design (80%) and addressed a physical health or disease issue (57%). Half (49%) of the included studies reported specific details of the Facebook recruitment process. Researchers paid between $1.36 and $110 per completing participants (Mean = $17.48, SD = $23.06). Among studies that examined the representativeness of their sample, the majority concluded (86%) their Facebook-recruited samples were similarly representative of samples recruited via traditional methods. These results indicate that Facebook is an effective and cost-efficient recruitment method. Researchers should consider their target group, advertisement wording, offering incentives and no-cost methods of recruitment when considering Facebook as a recruitment source. It is hoped this review will assist researchers to make decisions regarding the use of Facebook as a recruitment tool in future research.

Measuring Acceptability of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women: Development and Validation of the A-IPVAW Scale

“…Data were collected through social media and e-mail snowballing. These methods have proven to be effective and cost-efficient in previous studies (for systematic reviews see Thornton et al, 2016;Topolovec-Vranic & Natarajan, 2016). A total pool of 2,698 responses was collected, most of which were from women (67.6% of the respondents).…”

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

“…However, the costs of hiring research staff with language abilities to distribute flyers and screen potential participants is likely more expensive and timeintensive than the minimal time and personnel needed for recruitment through Facebook. Although we cannot speculate on the demographic similarities or differences between the East Asian and Latinx cancer survivors recruited through Facebook or in person, a growing number of studies have found minimal differences between participants recruited online or in person [11]. Yet, the feasibility and effectiveness of recruiting through other social media platforms (e.g., Craigslist) requires future testing.…”

“…The ads shown on Facebook were approved by the Institutional Review Board. Following the recommendations by Thornton and colleagues [11], the ads were concise, showed that the research study was affiliated with a university, and offered incentives for participation (see Figure 1). The link in each Facebook ad was connected to the study website, which stated the eligibility criteria for participating in the 30-minute online survey in the respective language that the ads were clicked (e.g., clicking the Korean ad would lead to the study information presented in Korean).…”

“…With the widespread use of social media, health researchers have turned to Facebook as a potential source of recruitment [11]. As the most popular social media website with 2.2 billion active users who have logged into Facebook at least once during the last 30 days [12], Facebook has qualities that may help overcome barriers and facilitate the recruitment of ethnic minority cancer survivors.…”

“…An increasing number of studies have demonstrated the feasibility of using Facebook to recruit participants for health and medical research [11]. However, we are the first to our knowledge to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of paid advertisements on Facebook as a platform for identifying Chinese, Korean, and Latinx American cancer survivors.…”