School of Nursing, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL.
School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions, Boston, MA.
JCO Oncol Pract. 2023 Nov;19(11):1020-1030. doi: 10.1200/OP.23.00117. Epub 2023 Sep 21.
Evidence supporting social media-based recruitment of cancer survivors is limited. This paper describes how we used Facebook during the COVID-19 pandemic to augment our recruitment of breast cancer survivors for our two-site telephone-based randomized clinical trial (RCT) at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Originally a two-site RCT of a telephone-delivered breast cancer survivorship intervention, we extended our clinic-based recruitment to Facebook. Participant characteristics, geographic reach, and baseline outcomes were compared across recruitment sources (ie, two clinics and Facebook) using descriptive statistics and effect sizes.
Enrollment rates (20%-29%) were comparable across recruitment sources. The 21-month Facebook marketing campaign accounted for 59% (n = 179/303) of our total sample and had the greatest geographic reach, recruiting women from 24 states. The Facebook campaign reached a total of 51,787 unique individuals and cost $88.44 in US dollars (USD) per enrolled participant. Clinic samples had a greater proportion of women who were widowed (8% 1%; = .03) and Facebook had a higher proportion of women with a household income over $40,000 USD (83% 71%; = .02). There were no statistically significant differences between Facebook and the two clinics on baseline survey scores.
Augmenting traditional recruitment with Facebook increased our RCT's geographic and sociodemographic reach and supported meeting recruitment goals in a timely way. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, cancer survivorship researchers should consider using social media as a recruitment strategy while weighing the advantages and potential biases introduced through such strategies.
支持基于社交媒体招募癌症幸存者的证据有限。本文描述了我们如何在 COVID-19 大流行期间利用 Facebook 来扩大我们在达特茅斯-希区柯克医疗中心和阿拉巴马大学伯明翰分校的两项基于电话的随机临床试验 (RCT) 中招募乳腺癌幸存者的范围。
最初是一项针对电话传递乳腺癌生存者干预措施的两项地点 RCT，我们将诊所招募扩展到 Facebook。使用描述性统计和效应大小比较了招募来源（即两个诊所和 Facebook）的参与者特征、地理覆盖范围和基线结果。
招募来源的入组率（20%-29%）相当。为期 21 个月的 Facebook 营销活动占我们总样本的 59%（n=179/303），并且具有最大的地理覆盖范围，招募了来自 24 个州的女性。Facebook 活动共接触到 51,787 名独特的个人，每位注册参与者的成本为 88.44 美元（USD）。诊所样本中丧偶的女性比例更高（8% 1%； =.03），而 Facebook 中家庭收入超过 40,000 美元的女性比例更高（83% 71%； =.02）。Facebook 和两个诊所之间在基线调查分数上没有统计学上的显著差异。
通过 Facebook 补充传统招募方法，增加了我们 RCT 的地理和社会人口统计学覆盖范围，并及时支持了招募目标的实现。在 COVID-19 大流行之后，癌症生存者研究人员应该考虑将社交媒体作为一种招募策略，同时权衡通过这种策略引入的优势和潜在偏见。
