Article Text
PDF
Abstract
Objectives Delivery of interventions via smartphone is a relatively new initiative in public health, and limited evidence exists regarding optimal strategies for recruitment. We describe the effectiveness of approaches used to recruit participants to a smartphone-enabled nutrition intervention trial.
Methods Internet and social media advertising, mainstream media advertising and research team networks were used to recruit New Zealand adults to a fully automated smartphone-delivered nutrition labelling trial (no face-to-face visits were required). Recruitment of Māori and Pacific participants was a key focus and ethically relevant recruitment materials and approaches were used where possible. The effectiveness of recruitment strategies was evaluated using Google Analytics, monitoring of study website registrations and randomisations, and self-reported participant data. The cost of the various strategies and associations with participant demographics were assessed.
Results Over a period of 13 months, there were 2448 registrations on the study website, and 1357 eligible individuals were randomised into the study (55%). Facebook campaigns were the most successful recruitment strategy overall (43% of all randomised participants) and for all ethnic groups (Māori 44%, Pacific 44% and other 43%). Significant associations were observed between recruitment strategy and age (p<0.001), household size (p<0.001), ethnicity (p<0.001), gender (p=0.005) and interest in healthy eating (p=0.022). Facebook campaigns resulted in the highest absolute numbers of study registrations and randomisations (966 and 584, respectively). Network strategies and Facebook campaigns cost least per randomised participant (NZ$4 and NZ$5, respectively), whereas radio advertising costs most (NZ$179 per participant).
Conclusion Internet and social media advertising were the most effective and least costly approaches to recruiting participants to a smartphone-delivered trial. These approaches also reached diverse ethnic groups. However, more culturally appropriate recruitment strategies are likely to be necessary in studies where large numbers of participants from specific ethnic groups are sought.
Trial registration ACTRN12614000644662; Post-results.
- recruitment
- randomised controlled trial
- smartphone
- social media
- nutrition
- effectiveness
- ethnicity
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors EV and CNM formulated the idea and planned the reported poststudy analysis; CNM had leadership responsibility for the main study design and execution; EV and HE contributed substantially to design of the main study; EV and JM managed day-to-day conduct of the study and oversaw data collection; EV and YJ performed the statistical analyses of the study data; CC and GS contributed to study design and revised the paper critically from cultural perspectives; EV wrote the paper and had primary responsibility for final content. All authors provided critical review and commentary on the draft manuscript and approved the final manuscript.
Funding This was an investigator-initiated study funded by a Health Research Council of New Zealand programme grant (13/724). The Health Research Council had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent Obtained.
Ethics approval University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement Additional data are available by emailing CNM at c.nimhurchu@auckland.ac.nz.