Research Continuity

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  • 1.  Tips for recruiting kids who meet specific inclusion criteria

    Posted 05-21-2020 21:32
    Hello all,

    Thalia Goldstein and I have a research project focused on understanding how children transition from belief to disbelief in Santa Claus. Initially, our recruitment focus was on children ages 6 to 12 who had stopped believing in Santa within the last 6 months. More recently, we've expanded the project to include any child between 6 and 17 who celebrated Santa at some point but no longer believes that he is real (and any adult 18 and up who celebrated Santa at some point as a child; you can see our website for more information).

    We've had two primary routes for recruitment up to this point: social media posts (e.g., Facebook, twitter) and word of mouth. Recruitment has been okay, but I keep wondering if there are other ways to reach families that we should consider. We do recognize that there are some challenges in recruiting families for a project on Santa that might not be a problem for other kinds of studies, and that every specific inclusion criteria might have its own recruitment approach. Still, though, I'm curious to hear people's ideas and experiences.

    Thank you!
    Candice

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    Candice Mills
    The University of Texas at Dallas
    Email: candice.mills@utdallas.edu
    Web: www.utdallas.edu/thinklab
    Twitter: @CandiceMMills
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  • 2.  RE: Tips for recruiting kids who meet specific inclusion criteria

    Posted 05-22-2020 10:49
    Hi Candice,

    Have you tried Facebook ads specifically or just posts through your own pages/groups? I haven't done this yet, but am in the process of setting it up through my university. The pricing seems very reasonable and Facebook does the work to target who would meet the criteria. For example, I am targeting young adults who have not attended college in particular cities in my state. If you have tried the Facebook ads and are still not having much success, I'd love to hear about that!

    Virginia

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    Virginia Tompkins
    The Ohio State University-Lima
    Lima OH
    567-242-6537
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  • 3.  RE: Tips for recruiting kids who meet specific inclusion criteria

    Posted 05-23-2020 14:58
    Hello, 

    I just finished recruitment on a study targeting 14-18 year old adolescents living in the United States and relied on Facebook and Instagram ads for recruitment and survey data collection. The pricing ended up being more reasonable than I expected at about .50 cents per survey completed (excluding those surveys that were completed too quickly, etc.). I was able to offer a small Amazon gift card as an incentive so that may have also helped with the lower "per link click" rate. As Virginia noted, the ads provide options for targeting certain groups which is quite nice and you can set up daily budgets to make sure the spending on ads stays within a limit.

    Lupita

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    Guadalupe Espinoza
    Associate Professor
    CSU, Fullerton
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  • 4.  RE: Tips for recruiting kids who meet specific inclusion criteria

    Posted 05-26-2020 11:57
    Hi Lupita,

    That's great to hear! I will also be offering a small Amazon gift card as an incentive so hopefully I will get the response I need fairly easily.

    Thanks,
    Virginia

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    Virginia Tompkins
    The Ohio State University-Lima
    Lima OH
    567-242-6537
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  • 5.  RE: Tips for recruiting kids who meet specific inclusion criteria

    Posted 05-28-2020 10:30
    Dear Lupita,

    This sounds promising. Did you have to get parental consent before the adolescents could take the survey? And can I ask how much you ended up offering as a gift card to make that enticing enough?

    We've had little luck with Facebook ads these past few years despite targeting parents of children in our age range. Previously, we focused on families in our area that could drive to campus; with our current online studies, we've advertised more broadly, since location doesn't matter. Almost all of these studies have involved sessions interacting with an experimenter. We've streamlined the process for our online study so that parents can sign up for a time at their convenience, and we have lots of times available, which hopefully helps some.

    I am thinking that we need to consider adjusting our recruitment approach for teens to change our study from an interview to a Qualtrics survey that functions similarly to an interview. It is possible that if we are advertising to teens something that they could complete on their own time, and if they received compensation per completion, then maybe we'd have better success, at least for that age range.

    Thank you,
    Candice

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    Candice Mills
    The University of Texas at Dallas
    Email: candice.mills@utdallas.edu
    Web: www.utdallas.edu/thinklab
    Twitter: @CandiceMMills
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  • 6.  RE: Tips for recruiting kids who meet specific inclusion criteria

    Posted 05-28-2020 21:12
    Hi Candice, 

    Given the topic area for the current project (school bullying and cyberbullying experiences among ethnic minority and LGBTQ youth) I was able to work with my IRB to waive the parent consent process. The participants in my study were between the ages of 14 - 18. I offered $8 Amazon gift cards. Honestly, given just the anecdotal evidence I've heard from friends and colleagues regarding how much time their teens are spending online, I think I may have been able to just offer $5. I've also been a part of projects in the past where even providing an opportunity drawing is a strong incentive (e.g., you could win a pair of AirPods). 

    It sounds like you and your team are working to make the study as convenient as possible for potential participants. For your teens, if you were able to change it from an interview to a (Qualtrics) survey, you might have more success since teens are largely familiar with completing surveys. However, doing an interview with a researcher might be more intimidating to them. We're all having to get pretty creative now! 

    Lupita

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    Guadalupe Espinoza
    Associate Professor
    CSU, Fullerton
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