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The Use of Facebook Advertising to Recruit Healthy Elderly People for a Clinical Trial: Baseline Metrics.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:This report provides data on the use of social media advertising as a clinical trial recruitment strategy targeting healthy volunteers aged 60 years and older. The social media advertising campaign focused on enrollment for a Phase 1 clinical trial. Traditional means of recruiting-billboards, newspaper advertising, word of mouth, personal referrals, and direct mail-were not producing enough qualified participants. OBJECTIVE:To demonstrate the effectiveness of using targeted advertising on the social networking site Facebook to recruit people aged 60 years and older for volunteer clinical trial participation. METHODS:The trial sponsor used a proactive approach to recruit participants using advertising on social media. The sponsor placed and monitored an Institutional Review Board-approved advertising campaign on Facebook to recruit potential candidates for a Phase 1 clinical trial. The clinical trial required a 10-day residential (overnight) stay at a clinic in Michigan, with one follow-up visit. The sponsor of the clinical trial placed the advertising, which directed interested respondents to a trial-specific landing page controlled by the Contract Research Organization (CRO). The CRO provided all follow-up consenting, prescreening, screening, and enrollment procedures. The campaign was waged over an 8-week period to supplement recruiting by the CRO. RESULTS:A total of 621 people responded to a Facebook advertising campaign by completing an online form or telephoning the CRO, and the clinical trial was fully enrolled at 45 subjects following an 8-week Facebook advertising campaign. CONCLUSIONS:An 8-week Facebook advertising campaign contributed to 868 inquiries made regarding a Phase 1 clinical trial seeking to enroll healthy elderly subjects. Over the initial 11 weeks of recruitment, 178 inquiries were received using traditional methods of outreach. Respondents to the Facebook advertising campaign described in this report engaged with the sponsored advertising at a higher rate than is typical for social media-based clinical trial recruitment strategies. The older adults' engagement rate of 4.92% was more than twice as high as click-through rates of younger adults engaged with social media advertising in other clinical trial recruitment studies. Advertising placed on the social media platform Facebook is effective with the healthy volunteer population aged 60 years and older. This approach can quickly and cost-effectively reach qualified candidates for clinical trial recruitment as a supplement to traditional means of recruiting. TRIAL REGISTRATION:ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02840279; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02840279 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6wamIWXAt).

SUBMITTER: Cowie JM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5803529 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The Use of Facebook Advertising to Recruit Healthy Elderly People for a Clinical Trial: Baseline Metrics.

Cowie Julie M JM Gurney Mark E ME

JMIR research protocols 20180124 1

<h4>Background</h4>This report provides data on the use of social media advertising as a clinical trial recruitment strategy targeting healthy volunteers aged 60 years and older. The social media advertising campaign focused on enrollment for a Phase 1 clinical trial. Traditional means of recruiting-billboards, newspaper advertising, word of mouth, personal referrals, and direct mail-were not producing enough qualified participants.<h4>Objective</h4>To demonstrate the effectiveness of using targ ...[more]

PMID: 29367186

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Project description:BackgroundFacebook has shown promise as an economical means of recruiting participants for health research. However, few studies have evaluated this recruitment method in Canada, fewer still targeting older adults, and, to our knowledge, none specifically in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL).ObjectiveThis study aimed to assess Facebook advertising as an economical means of recruiting a representative sample of adults aged 35 to 74 years in NL for a cross-sectional health survey.MethodsFacebook advertising was used to recruit for a Web-based survey on cancer awareness and prevention during April and May 2018; during recruitment, additional advertisements were targeted to increase representation of demographics that we identified as being underrepresented in our sample. Sociodemographic and health characteristics of the study sample were compared with distributions of the underlying population to determine representativeness. Cramer V indicates the magnitude of the difference between the sample and population distributions, interpreted as small (Cramer V=0.10), medium (0.30), and large (0.50). Sample characteristics were considered representative if there was no statistically significant difference in distributions (chi-square P>.01) or if the difference was small (V≤0.10), and practically representative if 0.10<V≤0.20. The cost per recruit of Facebook advertising was compared with a quote for a random digit dialing (RDD)-recruited postal survey to determine if this method was economical.ResultsFacebook advertising is feasible and economical to conduct survey research, reaching 34,012 people, of which 2067 clicked on the ad, for a final sample size of 1048 people at Can $2.18 per recruit versus the quoted Can $23,316.05 for 400 recruits (Can $35.52 per recruit) via RDD. The sample was representative of rural and urban geography (P=.02; V=0.073), practically representative of age (P=.003; V=0.145) and income (P<.001; V=0.188), and over-representative of women (P<.001; V=0.507) and higher levels of education (P<.001; V=0.488). The sample was representative of the proportion of people with a regular health care provider (P=.94; V=0.025), diabetes prevalence (P=.002; V=0.096), and having had a colonoscopy or sigmoidoscopy (P=.27; V=0.034), and it was practically representative of smoking status (P<.001; V=0.14), and body mass index (P<.001; V=0.135). The sample was not representative of arthritis prevalence (P<.001; V=0.573), perceived health (P<.001; V=0.384), or time since last seasonal flu shot (P<.001; V=0.449).ConclusionsFacebook advertising offers an easy, rapid, and economical means to recruit a partially representative (representative or practically representative of 8 of the 13 characteristics studied) sample of middle-aged and older adults for health survey research. As Facebook uses a nonrandom targeting algorithm, caution is warranted in its applications for certain types of research.

Project description:BackgroundRecruitment 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.ObjectiveTo evaluate the effectiveness of paid advertisements on Facebook as a platform for recruiting pregnant women to a randomized controlled trial in comparison with traditional recruitment approaches.MethodsRecruitment using traditional approaches occurred for 7 months, whereas Facebook advertisements ran for a total of 26 days. Interested women were prompted to contact the study staff for a screening call to determine study eligibility. Costs associated with each recruitment approach were recorded and used to calculate the cost to recruit eligible participants. Performance of Facebook advertisements was monitored using Facebook Ads Manager.ResultsOf the 115 women included, 39.1% (n=45) of the women who contacted study staff heard about the study through Facebook, whereas 60.9% (n=70) of them heard about it through traditional recruitment approaches. During the 215 days (~7 months) that the traditional approaches were used, the average rate of interest was 0.3 (0.2) women/day, whereas the 26 days of Facebook advertisements resulted in an average rate of interest of 2.8 (1.7) women/day. Facebook advertisements cost Can $506.91 with a cost per eligible participant of Cad $20.28. In comparison, the traditional approaches cost Cad $1087, with approximately Cad $24.15 per eligible participant. Demographic characteristics of women were similar between the 2 recruitment methods except that women recruited using Facebook were significantly earlier in their pregnancy than those recruited using traditional approaches (P<.03).ConclusionsPaid Facebook advertisements hold promise as a platform for reaching pregnant women. The relative ease of placing an advertisement, the comparable cost per participant recruited, and the dramatically improved recruitment rates in comparison with traditional approaches highlight the importance of combining novel and traditional recruitment approaches to recruit women for pregnancy-related studies.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT02711644; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02711644 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6kKpagpMk).

Project description:BackgroundVeteran research has primarily been conducted with clinical samples and those already involved in health care systems, but much is to be learned about veterans in the community. Facebook is a novel yet largely unexplored avenue for recruiting veteran participants for epidemiological and clinical studies.ObjectiveIn this study, we utilized Facebook to recruit a sample of young adult veterans for the first phase of an online alcohol intervention study. We describe the successful Facebook recruitment process, including data collection from over 1000 veteran participants in approximately 3 weeks, procedures to verify participation eligibility, and comparison of our sample with nationally available norms.MethodsParticipants were young adult veterans aged 18-34 recruited through Facebook as part of a large study to document normative drinking behavior among a large community sample of veterans. Facebook ads were targeted toward young veterans to collect information on demographics and military characteristics, health behaviors, mental health, and health care utilization.ResultsWe obtained a sample of 1023 verified veteran participants over a period of 24 days for the advertising price of approximately US $7.05 per verified veteran participant. Our recruitment strategy yielded a sample similar to the US population of young adult veterans in most demographic areas except for race/ethnicity and previous branch of service, which when we weighted the sample on race/ethnicity and branch a sample better matched with the population data was obtained. The Facebook sample recruited veterans who were engaged in a variety of risky health behaviors such as binge drinking and marijuana use. One fourth of veterans had never since discharge been to an appointment for physical health care and about half had attended an appointment for service compensation review. Only half had attended any appointment for a mental health concern at any clinic or hospital. Despite more than half screening positive for current probable mental health disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, only about 1 in 3 received mental health care in the past year and only 1 in 50 received such care within the past month.ConclusionsThis work expands on the work of other studies that have examined clinical samples of veterans only and suggests Facebook can be an adequate method of obtaining samples of veterans in need of care.Trial registrationClinicaltrials.gov NCT02187887; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02187887 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6YiUKRsXY).

Project description:BACKGROUND:Participant recruitment is often a challenge, particularly enrolling individuals with relatively rare characteristics. The wide reach of social media may provide a mechanism to overcome these challenges. OBJECTIVE:This paper aimed to provide information to researchers who seek to recruit participants from rare populations using social media for studies with demanding protocols. We aimed to describe a pilot study protocol that identified and enrolled pregnant women (second or third trimester) who were exclusive users of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes). We have described the recruitment methods, time, and cost; examined advertisement types that were more or less successful; discussed participant retention and relationship management; and described the process of collecting biological data. METHODS:In an open-access, nonrandomized pilot study, we placed Facebook advertisements that were selectively targeting women who were likely to be pregnant and interested in e-cigarettes or vaping. The advertisements invited individuals to complete a fully automated eligibility screener based on Qualtrics. Eligible participants were asked to (1) complete a Web-based survey that collected detailed information on the use of e-cigarettes, including the exact type of device and electronic liquid, (2) report the frequency and intensity of e-cigarette use for 3 months before pregnancy and during each trimester, and (3) provide a saliva specimen for a nicotine biomarker assay. We collected a photograph of each participant's e-cigarette device, 8 weeks after the mother's due date, to allow corroboration of the self-report and the baby's birth weight and gestational age from the participant's physician. RESULTS:Participants were recruited between August 19 and October 26, 2017. We enrolled 20 participants in 2 months at a cost of US $3421.28. Baseline data were collected for all 20 participants. Of the 20 women enrolled, 16 provided a saliva sample, 4 provided a photo of the e-cigarette device, and 10 provided physician contact information. Of the 10 physicians contacted by mail, 6 responded with information on the participants and their babies. CONCLUSIONS:Study findings suggest that Facebook's targeting criteria should focus on e-cigarette users to maximize advertisement exposure of potentially eligible women. In addition, saliva sample collection was feasible among pregnant women (second or third trimester) who were exclusive e-cigarette users, but obtaining photographs and physician reports was problematic and called for further refinement. These lessons are likely useful to others who are seeking to use social media to recruit participants from rare populations into studies with demanding protocols.

Dataset Information

The Use of Facebook Advertising to Recruit Healthy Elderly People for a Clinical Trial: Baseline Metrics.

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The Use of Facebook Advertising to Recruit Healthy Elderly People for a Clinical Trial: Baseline Metrics.

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