Re: Challenges of Internet Recruitment: A Case Study with Disappointing Results

On Mon, 24 Feb 2025 13:41:08 -0000 (UTC), pschleck@panix.com (Paul W. Schleck) wrote:   

Path: news..!feeder3.eternal-september.org!panix!.POSTED.panix2.panix.com!not-for-mail    
From: pschleck@panix.com (Paul W. Schleck)   
Newsgroups: alt.fan.usenet,alt.culture.usenet,news.groups 
Subject: Challenges of Internet Recruitment: A Case Study with Disappointing Results 
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2025 13:41:08 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC  
Message-ID: <vphstk$bco$1@reader1.panix.com> 
Injection-Info: reader1.panix.com; posting-host="panix2.panix.com:166.84.1.2";
...   
"Overall, the recruitment rate was disappointingly low. In our case,   
recruitment using Internet technologies including email, electronic  
discussion boards, Usenet forums, and websites did not prove to be an
effective approach for soliciting young subjects to participate in our  
research."  
https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicUsenet/comments/1iidfqk/challenges_of_internet_recruitment_a_case_study/  

  
(recycled, unattributed, cross-posted, classic troll farm rerun)   
 
(using Tor Browser 14.0.6) 
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=recruitment+rate+was+disappointingly+low   

...  
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15829478/ 
Randomized Controlled Trial 
J Med Internet Res  
2005 Mar 19;7(1):e6.

 ^^^^ ^^^ ^^   

doi: 10.2196/jmir.7.1.e6.
Challenges of internet recruitment: a case study with disappointing results
Abstract  
Background: The Internet provides tremendous opportunities for innovative 
research, but few publications on the use of the Internet for recruiting
study participants exist. This paper summarizes our experiences from 2 
studies in which we attempted to to recruit teenagers on the Internet for  
a questionnaire study to evaluate a smoking-cessation website. 

                          ^^^^^^^^ ^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^  

Objective: To evaluate strategies of recruiting teenagers for the 
evaluation of a smoking-cessation website through the Internet.   
Methods: In Study 1 (Defined Community Recruitment), we sent invitation
emails to registered members of a youth health website, CyberIsle. A total 
of 3801 email addresses were randomly divided into 2 groups. In the first
group, emails indicated that the first 30 respondents would receive a Can
dollars 20 electronic gift certificate for use at an online bookstore if   
they would go to the Smoking Zine website and respond to a short survey.  
For the second group, the email also indicated that respondents would
receive an additional Can dollars 10 gift certificate if they referred  
their friends to the study. Reminder emails were sent 10 days after the
sending of the initial invitation email. In Study 2 (Open Recruitment), we
posted invitation messages on Web discussion boards, Usenet forums, and
one specialized recruitment website, and attempted a snowball recruiting  
strategy. When potential participants arrived at the study site, they were
automatically randomized into either the higher incentives group (Can 
dollars 15 electronic gift certificate) or lower incentive group (Can
dollars 5 gift certificate). 
Results: In Study 1 (defined community recruitment), 2109 emails were
successfully delivered. Only 5 subjects (0.24%), including 1 referred by a
friend, passed the recruitment process and completed the questionnaire; a  
further 6 individuals visited the information page of the study but did 
not complete the study. In Study 2 (open recruitment), the number of users 
seeing the advertisement is unknown. A total of 35 users arrived at the 
website, of whom 14 participants were recruited (8 from the Can dollars 15
gift certificate group and 6 from the Can dollars 5 gift certificate
group). Another 5 were recruited from the general Internet community (3
from discussion boards and 2 from the Research Volunteers website). The  
remaining 9 participants were recruited through friend referrals with the
snowball strategy.  
Conclusions: Overall, the recruitment rate was disappointingly low. In   
our case, recruitment using Internet technologies including email,  
electronic discussion boards, Usenet forums, and websites did not prove to
be an effective approach for soliciting young subjects to participate in  
our research. Possible reasons are discussed, including the participants'  
perspective. A major challenge is to differentiate trustable and
legitimate messages from spam and fraudulent misinformation on the  
Internet. From the researchers' perspective, approaches are needed to  
engage larger samples, to verify participants' attributes, and to evaluate
and adjust for potential biases associated with Internet recruitment.

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