Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.
Who will be affected?
Readers: No access to all 28 journals. We recommend accessing our articles via PubMed Central
Authors: No access to the submission form or your user account.
Reviewers: No access to your user account. Please download manuscripts you are reviewing for offline reading before Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 7:00 PM.
Editors: No access to your user account to assign reviewers or make decisions.
Copyeditors: No access to user account. Please download manuscripts you are copyediting before Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 7:00 PM.
Merits and Pitfalls of Social Media as a Platform for Recruitment of Study Participants
Qutaibah Oudat;
Tamilyn Bakas;
Alia Ghoneum
ABSTRACT
Efficient and effective methods of recruiting participants for studies have characteristically come with many challenges. The unprecedented rise of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have revolutionized the ease of recruiting participants as compared to more traditional methods such as newspaper or radio advertisements. While these new advances may seem to increase the success of recruitment, they are not without their own faults and limitations. In this article, we intend to dissect the advantages and disadvantages of social media platforms in recruiting participants. In specific, we will discuss the advantages of targeted and rapid recruitment, engagement, cost reduction as well as the disadvantages of representativeness, privacy concerns, limited control and limited access.
Citation
Please cite as:
Oudat Q, Bakas T, Ghoneum A
Merits and Pitfalls of Social Media as a Platform for Recruitment of Study Participants