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

On Mon, 24 Feb 2025 13:41:08 -0000 (UTC), [email protected] (Paul W. Schleck) wrote: 
>Path: news..!feeder3.eternal-september.org!panix!.POSTED.panix2.panix.com!not-for-mail  
>From: [email protected] (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: <[email protected]>
>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.
[end quoted plain text]