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Online Recruitment: Feasibility, Cost, and Representativeness in a Study of Postpartum Women

BACKGROUND: Online recruitment is feasible, low-cost, and can provide high-quality epidemiological data. However, little is known about the feasibility of recruiting postpartum women online, or sample representativeness. OBJECTIVE: The current study investigates the feasibility of recruiting a popul...

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Autores principales: Leach, Liana S, Butterworth, Peter, Poyser, Carmel, Batterham, Philip J, Farrer, Louise M
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5362693/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28274906
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.5745
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author Leach, Liana S
Butterworth, Peter
Poyser, Carmel
Batterham, Philip J
Farrer, Louise M
author_facet Leach, Liana S
Butterworth, Peter
Poyser, Carmel
Batterham, Philip J
Farrer, Louise M
author_sort Leach, Liana S
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Online recruitment is feasible, low-cost, and can provide high-quality epidemiological data. However, little is known about the feasibility of recruiting postpartum women online, or sample representativeness. OBJECTIVE: The current study investigates the feasibility of recruiting a population of postpartum women online for health research and examines sample representativeness. METHODS: Two samples of postpartum women were compared: those recruited online as participants in a brief survey of new mothers (n=1083) and those recruited face-to-face as part of a nationally representative study (n=579). Sociodemographic, general health, and mental health characteristics were compared between the two samples. RESULTS: Obtaining a sample of postpartum women online for health research was highly efficient and low-cost. The online sample over-represented those who were younger (aged 25-29 years), were in a de facto relationship, had higher levels of education, spoke only English at home, and were first-time mothers. Members of the online sample were significantly more likely to have poor self-rated health and poor mental health than the nationally representative sample. Health differences remained after adjusting for sociodemographic differences. CONCLUSIONS: Potential exists for feasible and low-cost e-epidemiological research with postpartum populations; however, researchers should consider the potential influence of sample nonrepresentativeness.
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spelling pubmed-53626932017-04-06 Online Recruitment: Feasibility, Cost, and Representativeness in a Study of Postpartum Women Leach, Liana S Butterworth, Peter Poyser, Carmel Batterham, Philip J Farrer, Louise M J Med Internet Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: Online recruitment is feasible, low-cost, and can provide high-quality epidemiological data. However, little is known about the feasibility of recruiting postpartum women online, or sample representativeness. OBJECTIVE: The current study investigates the feasibility of recruiting a population of postpartum women online for health research and examines sample representativeness. METHODS: Two samples of postpartum women were compared: those recruited online as participants in a brief survey of new mothers (n=1083) and those recruited face-to-face as part of a nationally representative study (n=579). Sociodemographic, general health, and mental health characteristics were compared between the two samples. RESULTS: Obtaining a sample of postpartum women online for health research was highly efficient and low-cost. The online sample over-represented those who were younger (aged 25-29 years), were in a de facto relationship, had higher levels of education, spoke only English at home, and were first-time mothers. Members of the online sample were significantly more likely to have poor self-rated health and poor mental health than the nationally representative sample. Health differences remained after adjusting for sociodemographic differences. CONCLUSIONS: Potential exists for feasible and low-cost e-epidemiological research with postpartum populations; however, researchers should consider the potential influence of sample nonrepresentativeness. JMIR Publications 2017-03-08 /pmc/articles/PMC5362693/ /pubmed/28274906 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.5745 Text en ©Liana S Leach, Peter Butterworth, Carmel Poyser, Philip J Batterham, Louise M Farrer. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 08.03.2017. https://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/ (https://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
Leach, Liana S
Butterworth, Peter
Poyser, Carmel
Batterham, Philip J
Farrer, Louise M
Online Recruitment: Feasibility, Cost, and Representativeness in a Study of Postpartum Women
title Online Recruitment: Feasibility, Cost, and Representativeness in a Study of Postpartum Women
title_full Online Recruitment: Feasibility, Cost, and Representativeness in a Study of Postpartum Women
title_fullStr Online Recruitment: Feasibility, Cost, and Representativeness in a Study of Postpartum Women
title_full_unstemmed Online Recruitment: Feasibility, Cost, and Representativeness in a Study of Postpartum Women
title_short Online Recruitment: Feasibility, Cost, and Representativeness in a Study of Postpartum Women
title_sort online recruitment: feasibility, cost, and representativeness in a study of postpartum women
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5362693/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28274906
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.5745
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