Impact of Socioeconomic Factors on Participant Engagement In Genetic Studies

Abstract

Internet-based technologies are increasingly being utilized for research studies. However, it is not known whether using internet-based approaches will effectively engage participants from diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. We offered genetic ancestry results to 967 participants who were recruited for a genetic study. We evaluated viewing internet-based genetic ancestry results among participants who expressed high interest in obtaining the results, defining a measure of engagement.64% of participants stated that they were very or extremely interested in their genetic ancestry results. Among interested participants, individuals with a high school diploma (N=473) viewed their results 19% of the time relative to 4% of the 145 participants without a diploma (p<0.0001). Similarly, 22% of participants with household income above the federal poverty level (N=286) viewed their results relative to 10% of the 314 participants living below the federal poverty level (p<0.0001). Among interested participants both with a high school degree and living above the poverty level, self-identified Caucasians were more likely to view results than self-identified African Americans (p<0.0001), and females were more likely to view results than males (p=0.0007).In an underserved population, we found engagement in internet-based research to be low despite high reported interest. This suggests that explicit strategies should be developed to increase diversity in internet-based research.