ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2017
Costs and Efficiency of Online and Offline Recruitment Methods: A Web-Based Cohort Study.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 58 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
58 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Recruiting Asian Americans for Online Studies: Methodological Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Pooled it
- Online Patient Recruitment in Clinical Trials: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Pooled it
- Recruitment strategies in randomised controlled trials of men aged 50 years and older: a systematic review.BMJ open · 2019Pooled it
- Recruitment of Young Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex With Men for a Web-Based Human Papillomavirus Vaccination Intervention: Differences in Participant Characteristics and Study Engagement by Recruitment Source in a Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Trial
- Effects of Vaping Prevention Messages on Electronic Vapor Product Beliefs, Perceived Harms, and Behavioral Intentions among Young Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Trial
- Testing the Effectiveness of an Animated Decision Aid to Improve Recruitment of Control Participants in a Case-Control Study: Web-Based Experiment.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Trial
- Comparing Social Media and In-Person Recruitment: Lessons Learned From Recruiting Substance-Using, Sexual and Gender Minority Adolescents and Young Adults for a Randomized Control Trial.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2021Trial
- Recruiting Cancer Survivors to a Mobile Mindfulness Intervention in the United States: Exploring Online and Face-to-Face Recruitment Strategies.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Trial
- Recruiting and Retaining Youth and Young Adults in the Policy and Communication Evaluation (PACE) Vermont Study: Randomized Controlled Trial of Participant Compensation.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Trial
- Trial
- Transdiagnostic child mental health trajectories in Japan: protocol for a nationwide web‑based open cohort study.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- Recruitment strategies and participant motivations in a digital randomized controlled trial for the prevention of anxiety disorders: the prevANS study.Frontiers in digital health · 2026Article
- Addressing Survey Fraud in Online Health Research: A Case Study of Latine Sexual Minority Men.Research in nursing & health · 2025Article
- Effectiveness and Costs of Participant Recruitment Strategies to a Web-Based Population Cohort: Observational Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Observational
- Research recruitment strategies in the digital era: Opportunities and challenges of social media.Contemporary clinical trials · 2025Article
- Improving Data Integrity in Samples Obtained From Web-Based Recruitment: Protocol for the Development of a Novel System for Assessing Participant Authenticity in a Remote Longitudinal Cohort Study of Polysubstance Use.JMIR research protocols · 2025Article
- Recruitment rate comparison between a virtual tele-research cohort and a traditional centre-based cohort in idiopathic inflammatory myopathy.Rheumatology (Oxford, England) · 2025Observational
- Emotional distress and affective knowledge representation one year after the COVID-19 outbreak.PloS one · 2025Article
- Participant engagement and involvement in longitudinal cohort studies: qualitative insights from a selection of pregnancy and birth, twin, and family-based population cohort studies.BMC medical research methodology · 2024Article
- Cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and fecundability: a prospective cohort study.Human reproduction (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe Internet is widely used to conduct research studies on health issues. Many different methods are used to recruit participants for such studies, but little is known about how various recruitment methods compare in terms of efficiency and costs.
objectiveThe aim of our study was to compare online and offline recruitment methods for Internet-based studies in terms of efficiency (number of recruited participants) and costs per participant.
methodsWe employed several online and offline recruitment methods to enroll 18- to 45-year-old women in an Internet-based Danish prospective cohort study on fertility. Offline methods included press releases, posters, and flyers. Online methods comprised advertisements placed on five different websites, including Facebook and Netdoktor.dk. We defined seven categories of mutually exclusive recruitment methods and used electronic tracking via unique Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and self-reported data to identify the recruitment method for each participant. For each method, we calculated the average cost per participant and efficiency, that is, the total number of recruited participants.
resultsWe recruited 8252 study participants. Of these, 534 were excluded as they could not be assigned to a specific recruitment method. The final study population included 7724 participants, of whom 803 (10.4%) were recruited by offline methods, 3985 (51.6%) by online methods, 2382 (30.8%) by online methods not initiated by us, and 554 (7.2%) by other methods. Overall, the average cost per participant was €6.22 for online methods initiated by us versus €9.06 for offline methods. Costs per participant ranged from €2.74 to €105.53 for online methods and from €0 to €67.50 for offline methods. Lowest average costs per participant were for those recruited from Netdoktor.dk (€2.99) and from Facebook (€3.44).
conclusionsIn our Internet-based cohort study, online recruitment methods were superior to offline methods in terms of efficiency (total number of participants enrolled). The average cost per recruited participant was also lower for online than for offline methods, although costs varied greatly among both online and offline recruitment methods. We observed a decrease in the efficiency of some online recruitment methods over time, suggesting that it may be optimal to adopt multiple online methods.
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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.