Abstract

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as Facebook offer health researchers a novel means to reach and engage with the public. Following a mumps outbreak in a Dutch village after a Youth Club party organised via the Facebook Events facility, we used Facebook to recruit attendees to our outbreak investigation. After a poor response using traditional means of publicising the study, we opened a Facebook account under the study name, sent private messages about the study to all individuals invited to the party via the Facebook Event, and regularly posted the questionnaire web-link to the online notice boards (“Wall”) on the Youth Club and our own Facebook accounts. We concurrently incentivised participation using gift vouchers but only directly informed individuals who had responded “Yes” to the Event of the incentive. Participant numbers subsequently increased from ten to 60 (response ~60%). 80% of participants reported hearing about the study via Facebook. Although impossible to disentangle the effects of the active Facebook protocol and the incentive, Facebook offered a means of directly contacting attendees whilst avoiding advertising the incentive to non-attendees. SNSs can potentially make an important contribution to modern health research, and ethical codes of conduct should be updated to encompass their use.

Keywords: Social networks; Outbreaks; Recruitment; Facebook