Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Mar 29, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: May 5, 2023 - Jul 5, 2023
Date Accepted: Sep 4, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Merits and Pitfalls of Social Media as a Platform for Recruitment of Study Participants
ABSTRACT
Methods of recruiting participants for research 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. The purpose of this article is to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of social media platforms in recruiting participants. In particular, advantages include access to a broad audience, targeted and rapid recruitment, engagement, and reduced cost whereas disadvantages consist of representativeness, privacy concerns, limited control, and limited access.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.