Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Apr 9, 2020
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 9, 2020 - May 25, 2020
Date Accepted: Jan 17, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Recruitment of participants for a virtual supermarket study: An observational study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Virtual supermarkets offer a practical and affordable means to test the efficacy of different pricing and nudging strategies before they are implemented in real-world settings. Despite the advantages of using virtual supermarkets, conducting studies ian online settings are challenging with regard to the recruitment and retention of sufficient and appropriate participants.
Objective:
To describe the cost, time and retention rates of participants recruited using various recruitment strategies.
Methods:
This cross-sectional study used data from a randomized controlled trial where 455 Dutch adults with low or high educational level were invited to conduct five shops within a three-dimensional virtual supermarket. A log to track the costs and time spent on the different recruitment strategies was kept by the study team. Outcome measures included the cost of recruitment strategies, the time investment by researchers with the different recruitment strategies and recruitment and attrition rates of participants in the study.
Results:
In total, 346 participants completed the study (completion rate: 74%). The median age was 31.0 (IQR: 25.0) and 45.4% were highly educated. N=235 (52%) were recruited via social media campaigns, N=131 (29%) via home-delivered flyers, N=38 (8%) via flyers received from the study team and N=46 (10%) via word-of-mouth. Out of all paid recruitment strategies, social media campaigns were the cheapest and least time-consuming, whileand flyers received from the study team was the most expensive and time-consuming recruitment strategy. Age, sex, overweight status, employment situation and number of adults within the household varied by recruitment strategy.
Conclusions:
Using different recruitment strategies resulted in an efficient recruitment of a representative study sample and retention of participants was relatively high. While ‘word-of-mouth’ was the most cost- and time-effective recruitment strategy, using only one type of recruitment strategy could lead to a demographically skewed study population.
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