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

ABSTRACT:

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.

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SUBMITTER: Adam LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5052464 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature