University of Toronto, Canada.
Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning, Canada.
Health Informatics J. 2019 Dec;25(4):1485-1497. doi: 10.1177/1460458218775158. Epub 2018 May 30.
Twitter has the potential to optimize research conduct, but more research is needed around the nature of study-related tweets and strategies for optimizing reach. In the context of our caregiving study, we aimed to describe the nature and extent of study-related tweets, the extent to which they were shared by others, and their potential reach. To do so, we conducted a secondary analysis of our Twitter recruitment. We aggregated and categorized study-related tweets and analyzed the reach of the 10 most retweeted tweets. Results indicated that of 71 caregivers, 27 were recruited via Twitter. General recruitment tweets were most-shared by users. Tweet reach ranged from 5273 to 62,144 users. Twitter caregivers were demographically comparable to non-Twitter caregivers but had higher Internet proficiency and fewer children. Overall, using a personal Twitter account can expand the reach of study recruitment. Future research should compare different recruitment strategies and explore characteristics that may challenge the heterogeneity of Twitter samples.
推特有可能优化研究的进行，但需要更多研究来了解与研究相关的推文的性质和优化覆盖范围的策略。在我们的护理研究中，我们旨在描述与研究相关的推文的性质和范围、它们被他人分享的程度以及它们的潜在影响力。为此，我们对我们的推特招聘进行了二次分析。我们汇总和分类了与研究相关的推文，并分析了最被转发的 10 条推文的影响力。结果表明，在 71 名照顾者中，有 27 人是通过推特招募的。一般的招聘推文被用户分享的次数最多。推文的影响力范围从 5273 到 62144 用户。使用个人推特账户的照顾者在人口统计学上与非推特账户的照顾者相似，但互联网技能更高，孩子更少。总的来说，使用个人推特账户可以扩大研究招募的范围。未来的研究应该比较不同的招募策略，并探索可能挑战推特样本异质性的特征。
