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The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Online Recruitment of Parents for Health-Related Focus Groups: Lessons Learned

BACKGROUND: We describe our experiences with identifying and recruiting Ontario parents through the Internet, primarily, as well as other modes, for participation in focus groups about adding the influenza vaccine to school-based immunization programs. OBJECTIVE: Our objectives were to assess partic...

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Autores principales: Quach, Susan, Pereira, Jennifer A, Russell, Margaret L, Wormsbecker, Anne E, Ramsay, Hilary, Crowe, Lois, Quan, Sherman D, Kwong, Jeff
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications Inc. 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3841369/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24231040
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.2829
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author Quach, Susan
Pereira, Jennifer A
Russell, Margaret L
Wormsbecker, Anne E
Ramsay, Hilary
Crowe, Lois
Quan, Sherman D
Kwong, Jeff
author_facet Quach, Susan
Pereira, Jennifer A
Russell, Margaret L
Wormsbecker, Anne E
Ramsay, Hilary
Crowe, Lois
Quan, Sherman D
Kwong, Jeff
author_sort Quach, Susan
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: We describe our experiences with identifying and recruiting Ontario parents through the Internet, primarily, as well as other modes, for participation in focus groups about adding the influenza vaccine to school-based immunization programs. OBJECTIVE: Our objectives were to assess participation rates with and without incentives and software restrictions. We also plan to examine study response patterns of unique and multiple submissions and assess efficiency of each online advertising mode. METHODS: We used social media, deal forum websites, online classified ads, conventional mass media, and email lists to invite parents of school-aged children from Ontario, Canada to complete an online questionnaire to determine eligibility for focus groups. We compared responses and paradata when an incentive was provided and there were no software restrictions to the questionnaire (Period 1) to a period when only a single submission per Internet protocol (IP) address (ie, software restrictions invoked) was permitted and no incentive was provided (Period 2). We also compared the median time to complete a questionnaire, response patterns, and percentage of missing data between questionnaires classified as multiple submissions from the same Internet protocol (IP) address or email versus unique submissions. Efficiency was calculated as the total number of hours study personnel devoted to an advertising mode divided by the resultant number of unique eligible completed questionnaires . RESULTS: Of 1346 submitted questionnaires, 223 (16.6%) were incomplete and 34 (2.52%) did not meet the initial eligibility criteria. Of the remaining 1089 questionnaires, 246 (22.6%) were not from Ontario based on IP address and postal code, and 469 (43.1%) were submitted from the same IP address or email address (multiple submissions). In Period 2 vs Period 1, a larger proportion of questionnaires were submitted from Ontario (92.8%, 141/152 vs 75.1%, 702/937, P<.001), and a smaller proportion of same IP addresses (7.9%, 12/152 vs 47.1%, 441/937, P<.001) were received. Compared to those who made unique submissions, those who made multiple submissions spent less time per questionnaire (166 vs 215 seconds, P<.001), and had a higher percentage of missing data among their responses (15.0% vs 7.6%, P=.004). Advertisements posted on RedFlagDeals were the most efficient for recruitment (0.03 hours of staff time per questionnaire), whereas those placed on Twitter were the least efficient (3.64 hours of staff time per questionnaire). CONCLUSIONS: Using multiple online advertising strategies was effective for recruiting a large sample of participants in a relatively short period time with minimal resources. However, risks such as multiple submissions and potentially fraudulent information need to be considered. In our study, these problems were associated with providing an incentive for responding, and could have been partially avoided by activating restrictive software features for online questionnaires.
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spelling pubmed-38413692013-11-27 The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Online Recruitment of Parents for Health-Related Focus Groups: Lessons Learned Quach, Susan Pereira, Jennifer A Russell, Margaret L Wormsbecker, Anne E Ramsay, Hilary Crowe, Lois Quan, Sherman D Kwong, Jeff J Med Internet Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: We describe our experiences with identifying and recruiting Ontario parents through the Internet, primarily, as well as other modes, for participation in focus groups about adding the influenza vaccine to school-based immunization programs. OBJECTIVE: Our objectives were to assess participation rates with and without incentives and software restrictions. We also plan to examine study response patterns of unique and multiple submissions and assess efficiency of each online advertising mode. METHODS: We used social media, deal forum websites, online classified ads, conventional mass media, and email lists to invite parents of school-aged children from Ontario, Canada to complete an online questionnaire to determine eligibility for focus groups. We compared responses and paradata when an incentive was provided and there were no software restrictions to the questionnaire (Period 1) to a period when only a single submission per Internet protocol (IP) address (ie, software restrictions invoked) was permitted and no incentive was provided (Period 2). We also compared the median time to complete a questionnaire, response patterns, and percentage of missing data between questionnaires classified as multiple submissions from the same Internet protocol (IP) address or email versus unique submissions. Efficiency was calculated as the total number of hours study personnel devoted to an advertising mode divided by the resultant number of unique eligible completed questionnaires . RESULTS: Of 1346 submitted questionnaires, 223 (16.6%) were incomplete and 34 (2.52%) did not meet the initial eligibility criteria. Of the remaining 1089 questionnaires, 246 (22.6%) were not from Ontario based on IP address and postal code, and 469 (43.1%) were submitted from the same IP address or email address (multiple submissions). In Period 2 vs Period 1, a larger proportion of questionnaires were submitted from Ontario (92.8%, 141/152 vs 75.1%, 702/937, P<.001), and a smaller proportion of same IP addresses (7.9%, 12/152 vs 47.1%, 441/937, P<.001) were received. Compared to those who made unique submissions, those who made multiple submissions spent less time per questionnaire (166 vs 215 seconds, P<.001), and had a higher percentage of missing data among their responses (15.0% vs 7.6%, P=.004). Advertisements posted on RedFlagDeals were the most efficient for recruitment (0.03 hours of staff time per questionnaire), whereas those placed on Twitter were the least efficient (3.64 hours of staff time per questionnaire). CONCLUSIONS: Using multiple online advertising strategies was effective for recruiting a large sample of participants in a relatively short period time with minimal resources. However, risks such as multiple submissions and potentially fraudulent information need to be considered. In our study, these problems were associated with providing an incentive for responding, and could have been partially avoided by activating restrictive software features for online questionnaires. JMIR Publications Inc. 2013-11-11 /pmc/articles/PMC3841369/ /pubmed/24231040 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.2829 Text en ©Susan Quach, Jennifer A Pereira, Margaret L Russell, Anne E Wormsbecker, Hilary Ramsay, Lois Crowe, Sherman D Quan, Jeff Kwong. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 11.11.2013. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Quach, Susan
Pereira, Jennifer A
Russell, Margaret L
Wormsbecker, Anne E
Ramsay, Hilary
Crowe, Lois
Quan, Sherman D
Kwong, Jeff
The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Online Recruitment of Parents for Health-Related Focus Groups: Lessons Learned
title The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Online Recruitment of Parents for Health-Related Focus Groups: Lessons Learned
title_full The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Online Recruitment of Parents for Health-Related Focus Groups: Lessons Learned
title_fullStr The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Online Recruitment of Parents for Health-Related Focus Groups: Lessons Learned
title_full_unstemmed The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Online Recruitment of Parents for Health-Related Focus Groups: Lessons Learned
title_short The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Online Recruitment of Parents for Health-Related Focus Groups: Lessons Learned
title_sort good, bad, and ugly of online recruitment of parents for health-related focus groups: lessons learned
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3841369/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24231040
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.2829
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