ArticleAddictive behaviors2017
Using Facebook ads with traditional paper mailings to recruit adolescent girls for a clinical trial.
Article in Addictive behaviors, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Online Patient Recruitment in Clinical Trials: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Pooled it
- Social media recruitment for mental health research: A systematic review.Comprehensive psychiatry · 2020Pooled it
- Pooled it
- The Use of Facebook in Recruiting Participants for Health Research Purposes: A Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2017Pooled it
- Recruiting sexual minority youth for a drug abuse prevention trial: Comparing Instagram and Facebook.Contemporary clinical trials · 2025Article
- Challenges and Opportunities in Recruiting Research Participants Using Facebook: Lessons Learned from an Exemplar Study.The Canadian journal of nursing research = Revue canadienne de recherche en sciences infirmieres · 2024Article
- Participant Recruitment Issues in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Clinical Trials with a Focus on Prevention Programs: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Literature.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Review
- Social Media Use for Research Participant Recruitment: Integrative Literature Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Review
- Facebook recruitment for research of children and parents during the COVID-19 pandemic.Applied nursing research : ANR · 2022Article
- An online survey to assess parents' preferences for learning about child health research.Nursing open · 2021Article
- The Use of Social Media for Health Research Purposes: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Article
- Yoga and Aerobic Dance for Pain Management in Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis: Protocol for a Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR research protocols · 2020Article
- A Web- and Mobile-Based Intervention for Comorbid, Recurrent Depression in Patients With Chronic Back Pain on Sick Leave (Get.Back): Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial on Feasibility, User Satisfaction, and Effectiveness.JMIR mental health · 2020Article
- Facebook ads to the rescue? Recruiting a hard to reach population into an Internet-based behavioral health intervention trial.Internet interventions · 2019Article
- Two- and three-year follow-up from a gender-specific, web-based drug abuse prevention program for adolescent girls.Addictive behaviors · 2019Article
- Towards an Architecture to Guarantee Both Data Privacy and Utility in the First Phases of Digital Clinical Trials.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018Article
- An Online Drug Abuse Prevention Program for Adolescent Girls: Posttest and 1-Year Outcomes.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
introductionClinical trials require sufficient samples recruited within limited time and budget constraints. Trials with minors are additionally burdened by the requirement for youth assent and parental permission. This paper details the use of Facebook ads and traditional paper mailings to enroll 797 adolescent girls for a longitudinal, web-based, drug abuse prevention trial. Data on sample representativeness and retention are also provided.
methodsFacebook ads appeared on the pages of females aged 13 or 14years who reside in the U.S. Ads linked girls to a recruitment website. Girls who wanted more information submitted contact information and were mailed information packets to their homes containing, among other things, youth assent and parent permission forms. Returned forms were verified for accuracy and validity.
resultsThe Facebook ad campaign reached 2,267,848 girls and had a unique click-through rate of 3.0%. The campaign cost $41,202.37 with an average cost of $51.70 per enrolled girl. Information packets were mailed to 1,873 girls. Approximately one-half of girls returned the forms, and 797 girls were enrolled. The Facebook campaign's success varied by ad type, month, and day of the week. Baseline data revealed comparability to national data on demographic and substance use variables.
conclusionsResults suggest that Facebook ads provide a useful initial point of access to unparalleled numbers of adolescents. Clinical trials may benefit from a two-fold recruitment strategy that uses online ads to attract interested adolescents followed by traditional recruitment methods to communicate detailed information to adolescents and parents.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.