Recruitment strategies of methamphetamine-using men who have sex with men into an online survey

Abstract

Recruiting hidden populations into online research remains challenging. In this manuscript, we report lessons learned from our efforts to recruit methamphetamine-using men who have sex with men. Between July and October 2012, we implemented a four-phase recruitment strategy to enroll a total of 343 methamphetamine-using MSM into an online survey about recent substance use, sexual behavior, and various psychosocial measures. The four phases were implemented sequentially. During phase one, we placed advertisements on mobile applications, and during phase two, we placed advertisements on traditional websites formatted for browsers. During phase three, we used e-mail to initiate snowball recruitment, and during phase four, we used social media for snowball recruitment. Advertisements on mobile devices and websites formatted for browsers proved to be expensive options and resulted in few eligible participants. Our attempts to initiate a snowball through e-mail also proved unsuccessful. The majority (n=320) of observations in our final dataset came from our use of social media. However, participant fraud was a concern, requiring us to implement a strong participant verification protocol. For maximum recruitment and cost-effectiveness, researchers should use social media for recruitment provided they employ strong participant verification protocols.

The Use of Social Media in Recruitment for Medical Research Studies: A Scoping Review

“…In further sections of this paper, the article by Head et al [35] is counted as a single article or 2 articles, according to whether the conclusions from the 2 studies pertinent to the outcomes of this paper are the same or different. Out of 30 studies, 12 studies (40%) reported higher rates of recruitment through social media as compared with any of the other methods used [14-17,26,28,31,32,35, 36,41,42] and 15 studies (50%) reported recruitment via social media to be less effective than at least one other method used [18-21,23-25, 27,33-35,37-40]. Heffner et al [20] and Rabin et al [24] found social media to be the least effective method out of multiple (>2) recruitment methods used.…”

“…Of the 12 studies that found social media to be the best method of recruitment, 8 were observational studies [14,16,17,26,28,31,35,41] and the remaining 4 were interventional studies [15,32,36,42], as shown in Multimedia Appendix 2. In addition, 6 of these studies targeted populations deemed hard to reach [16,17,28,31,32,36], and 6 studies targeted specific conditions or disorders [14,16,17,28,31,32].…”

“…In addition, 6 of these studies targeted populations deemed hard to reach [16,17,28,31,32,36], and 6 studies targeted specific conditions or disorders [14,16,17,28,31,32]. Furthermore, 1 study targeted only young adults (aged 23-30 years) [14].…”

Recruitment Strategies of Indian Men Who Have Sex with Men in the State of Maharashtra Into an Online Survey

“…In the table is a summation of number of times someone clicked on an advertisement posted on the sex-seeking website (which automatically linked them to the survey) or Facebook © , the number of times someone clicked on the survey link, and the number of persons who clicked on the link that completed consent and initiated and completed the survey. Because we followed protocols to remove individuals from the study who might misrepresent themselves (Bull et al, 2008; Grey et al, in press; Konstan et al, 2005; Pequegnat et al, 2007; Wilkerson et al., 2013), included in Table 1 is the number of persons from each phase who completed the study and were deemed eligible. Of the paid recruitment methods, phase seven, the offering of a free pass to the film festival, resulted in the lowest recruitment cost-per-participant.…”

“…Participants may also be solicited using closed email networks of willing contacts (Temple and Brown, 2011) or by offering incentives to key informants who may in turn help drive online sampling (Evans et al, 2011). Additionally, protocols have been developed to identify and remove participants who misrepresent themselves (Bull et al, 2008; Grey et al, in press; Konstan, Rosser, Ross, Stanton, & Edwards, 2005; Pequegnat et al, 2007; Wilkerson, Shenk, Grey, Rosser, & Noor, 2013)…”