Using Social Media to Enhance Study Recruitment: How Facebook and Twitter May Engage Vulnerable Populations

Purpose: According to the United Nations Specialized Agency for Information and Communication Technologies (2015), at least 40.6% of the world population is currently on the Internet.  In 2012, 1.4 billion of these internet users were on social networking sites (Statista, 2015).  As of September of 2015, 1.01 billion individuals accessed Facebook on a daily basis, and an additional 320 million users were active on Twitter (Facebook, 2015; Twitter, 2015).  With over half of lower-income, ethnic and racial minority, and rural populations now using social media, this explosion of Internet activity presents investigators with a novel, cost-effective approach to engaging previously hard-to-reach populations in health promotion and disease prevention research (Perrin, 2015).  The purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness of a social media based recruitment plan while enrolling middle-aged adults with lower-socioeconomic status into an ongoing randomized controlled trial (RCT) led by nursing researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.   

Methods: Data for this study will be collected from the recruitment outcomes of an ongoing RCT at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  The aims of the parent RCT are to assess the health and employment outcomes of extending the Chronic Disease Self-management Program to lower-SES employees between 40-64 years old.  While this program has traditionally been extended to retired populations, the researchers on this project have developed a novel recruitment strategy tailored to the interests and needs of this younger, oftentimes overlooked and underserved population.  This strategy includes the development of Facebook and Twitter accounts and the dissemination of Facebook advertisements.  Data concerning the effectiveness of this approach will be collected from usage statistics provided by Facebook and Twitter, including number of followers, re-tweets, likes and comments in addition to the number of people exposed to advertisements and the demographic characteristics of all who are reached and engaged by the social media-based recruitment.     

Results: After just two days, social-media based advertisements for the parent RCT reached approximately 1,008 adults in the target population.  Results shared during this conference will include the updated number and demographic characteristics of those reached by social-media based activity, the percentage of those reached who enroll in the study, and other media-relevant statistics such as number of followers, page likes and re-tweets.   

Conclusion: The results of this study could provide a valuable evidence base to guide the use of this still-new and emerging technology to enhance the engagement of vulnerable populations in health promotion research.  By further engaging underserved populations in such research, health professionals may begin to gain a better understanding of health disparities that continue to plague populations around the globe and work towards achieving more equitable health outcomes.