Abstract
BackgroundSocial media platforms have experienced unprecedented levels of growth and usage over the past decade, with Facebook hosting 2.7 billion active users worldwide, including over 200 million users in the United States. Facebook users have been underutilized and understudied by the academic community as a resource for participant recruitment.ObjectiveWe performed a pilot study to explore the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of Facebook advertisements for the recruitment of an online agricultural health and safety survey.MethodsWe undertook a 1-week advertising campaign utilizing the integrated, targeted advertising platform of Facebook Ads Manager with a target-spending limit of US $294. We created and posted three advertisements depicting varying levels of agricultural safety adoption leading to a brief survey on farm demographics and safety attitudes. We targeted our advertisements toward farm mothers aged 21-50 years in the United States and determined cost-effectiveness and potential biases. No participant incentive was offered.ResultsWe reached 40,024 users and gathered 318 advertisement clicks. Twenty-nine participants consented to the survey with 24 completions. Including personnel costs, the cost per completed survey was US $17.42. Compared to the distribution of female producers in the United States, our advertisements were unexpectedly overrepresented in the eastern United States and were underrepresented in the western United States.ConclusionsFacebook Ads Manager represents a potentially cost-effective and timely method to recruit participants for online health and safety research when targeting a specific population. However, social media recruitment mirrors traditional recruitment methods in its limitations, exhibiting geographic, response, and self-selection biases that need to be addressed.
Highlights
Researchers are facing a range of issues in recruiting participants, including decreasing response rates and increased difficulties in reaching participants through traditional modes such as phone and paper [1,2,3]
To determine the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of Facebook advertisements for an agricultural health and safety survey, we ran an advertising campaign consisting of three separate advertisements, each with a different agricultural image
N (%) 102 (0.72) 122 (0.83) 94 (0.84) 318 (0.79). This pilot project aimed to determine if Facebook Ads Manager could be a useful tool for recruiting samples of the agricultural population for online health and safety surveys
Summary
Researchers are facing a range of issues in recruiting participants, including decreasing response rates and increased difficulties in reaching participants through traditional modes such as phone and paper [1,2,3]. These challenges are associated with increased recruitment costs. Social media platforms have experienced unprecedented levels of growth and usage over the past decade, with Facebook hosting 2.7 billion active users worldwide, including over 200 million users in the United States. Facebook users have been underutilized and understudied by the academic community as a resource for participant recruitment
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