Obtaining contextually relevant geographic data using Facebook recruitment in public health studies

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

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 to 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.

Social Media as a Platform for Recruitment to a National Survey During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Feasibility and Cost Analysis

Background

With improved accessibility to social media globally, health researchers are capitalizing on social media platforms to recruit participants for research studies. This has particularly been the case during the COVID-19 pandemic, when researchers were not able to use traditional methods of recruitment. Nevertheless, there is limited evidence on the feasibility of social media for recruiting a national sample.

Objective

This paper describes the use of social media as a tool for recruiting a national sample of adults to a web-based survey during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

Between August and October 2020, participants were recruited through Facebook via two advertisement campaigns (paid option and no-cost option) into a web-based survey exploring the relationship between social determinants of health and well-being of adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were analyzed using SPSS software and Facebook metrics that were autogenerated by Facebook Ads Manager. Poststratification weights were calculated to match the Australian population on the basis of gender, age, and state or territory based on the 2016 Australian census data.

Results

In total, 9594 people were reached nationally with the paid option and potentially 902,000 people were reached through the no-cost option, resulting in a total of 1211 survey responses. The total cost of the advertisement campaign was Aus $649.66 (US $489.23), resulting in an overall cost per click of Aus $0.25 (US $0.19).

Conclusions

Facebook is a feasible and cost-effective method of recruiting participants for a web-based survey, enabling recruitment of population groups that are considered hard to reach or marginalized. Recruitment through Facebook facilitated diversity, with participants varying in socioeconomic status, geographical location, educational attainment, and age.

The geographies of digital health - Digital therapeutic landscapes and mobilities

Digital technologies have long impacted the field of health, causing fundamental changes for the geographies of the production, movement, and consumption of health. Despite this, there is limited health geography engagement with digital health, and an understanding of how digital health affects the spatialities of health remains underdeveloped. Here, using autoethnography, I reflect on personal encounters with digital health in the UK to initiate analytical attention into the geographies of digital health. I demonstrate that digital health technologies are interconnected and increasingly structure access to health, impacting the equality of health; and that digital health disrupts existing, and creates new, therapeutic landscapes and mobilities.

Threats of Bots and Other Bad Actors to Data Quality Following Research Participant Recruitment Through Social Media: Cross-Sectional Questionnaire

Background

Recruitment of health research participants through social media is becoming more common. In the United States, 80% of adults use at least one social media platform. Social media platforms may allow researchers to reach potential participants efficiently. However, online research methods may be associated with unique threats to sample validity and data integrity. Limited research has described issues of data quality and authenticity associated with the recruitment of health research participants through social media, and sources of low-quality and fraudulent data in this context are poorly understood.

Objective

The goal of the research was to describe and explain threats to sample validity and data integrity following recruitment of health research participants through social media and summarize recommended strategies to mitigate these threats. Our experience designing and implementing a research study using social media recruitment and online data collection serves as a case study.

Methods

Using published strategies to preserve data integrity, we recruited participants to complete an online survey through the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook. Participants were to receive $15 upon survey completion. Prior to manually issuing remuneration, we reviewed completed surveys for indicators of fraudulent or low-quality data. Indicators attributable to respondent error were labeled suspicious, while those suggesting misrepresentation were labeled fraudulent. We planned to remove cases with 1 fraudulent indicator or at least 3 suspicious indicators.

Results

Within 7 hours of survey activation, we received 271 completed surveys. We classified 94.5% (256/271) of cases as fraudulent and 5.5% (15/271) as suspicious. In total, 86.7% (235/271) provided inconsistent responses to verifiable items and 16.2% (44/271) exhibited evidence of bot automation. Of the fraudulent cases, 53.9% (138/256) provided a duplicate or unusual response to one or more open-ended items and 52.0% (133/256) exhibited evidence of inattention.

Conclusions

Research findings from several disciplines suggest studies in which research participants are recruited through social media are susceptible to data quality issues. Opportunistic individuals who use virtual private servers to fraudulently complete research surveys for profit may contribute to low-quality data. Strategies to preserve data integrity following research participant recruitment through social media are limited. Development and testing of novel strategies to prevent and detect fraud is a research priority.

Spontaneous Participation in Secondary Prevention Programs: The Role of Psychosocial Predictors

Disease prevention is a multifaceted construct that has been widely studied. Nevertheless, in spite of its importance, it is still not sufficiently considered by the general population. Since the reasons for this lack of consideration are not yet fully understood, we created an Online Prevention Survey (OPS) to investigate the role of both sociodemographic and psychological factors in predicting individuals’ spontaneous participation in secondary prevention programs. The results revealed that younger people, men, manual workers, unemployed people, and those who do not regularly practise physical activity were less likely to spontaneously participate in such programs. Furthermore, an analysis of the psychological determinants of the willingness to participate in secondary prevention programs showed that depressive symptoms negatively predict it, while an individual’s perception of receiving high social support acts as a positive predictor. Based on these results, we suggest the need for implementing new tailored approaches to promote prevention initiatives to those segments of the population which are more reluctant to spontaneously undertake prevention paths.