JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Multiple research strategies are required to recruit and engage a representative cohort of young adults in diabetes research. In this report, we describe an approach for online recruitment for a repeated-measures descriptive study.

Objective:

The objective of this study was to determine whether internet-based recruitment through multiple social media platforms, a clinical research platform, and community partnerships would serve as an effective way to recruit a representative sample of young adults ages 18-25 years with type 1 diabetes.

Methods:

We used a repeated-measures descriptive study. We captured enrollment rates and participant characteristics acquired from each social media platform through survey data and Facebook analytics.

Results:

ResearchMatch was overall the most cost-effective strategy yielding the most gender and racial diversity compared to the other internet platforms (Facebook Instagram, Twitter, Reddit), application postings (Beyond Type 1), and newsletters (CDN and a local area college). However, we suggest that the combination of these approaches yielded a larger more diverse sample than any one strategy alone. We incurred a cost of $16.91 to recruit each eligible participant with a 1.27% conversion rate and a 30% eligibility rate.

Conclusions:

Recruiting young adults with T1D across multiple internet-based platforms was an effective strategy to yield a moderately diverse sample. Leveraging a variety of recruitment strategies is necessary to produce a representative sample of young adults with T1D. Clinical Trial: N/A this is not a trial.