Recruiting Pregnant Patients for Survey Research: A Head to Head Comparison of Social Media-Based Versus Clinic-Based Approaches

BACKGROUND Recruiting a diverse sample of pregnant women for clinical research is a challenging but crucial task for improving obstetric services and maternal and child health outcomes. OBJECTIVE To compare the feasibility and cost of recruiting pregnant women for survey research using social media-based and clinic-based approaches. METHODS Advertisements were used to recruit pregnant women from the social media website Facebook. In-person methods were used to recruit pregnant women from the outpatient clinic of a large, tertiary care center. In both approaches, potential respondents were invited to participate in a 15-minute Web-based survey. Each recruitment method was monitored for 1 month. Using bivariate statistics, we compared the number, demographic characteristics, and health characteristics of women recruited and the cost per completed survey for each recruitment method. RESULTS The social media-based approach recruited 1178 women and the clinic-based approach recruited 219 women. A higher proportion of subjects recruited through social media identified as African American (29.4%, 207/705 vs 11.2%, 20/179), reported household incomes <US $30,000 per year (56.8%, 409/720 vs 25.8%, 47/182), reported being in early pregnancy (18.6%, 135/726 vs 10.4%, 19/183 first trimester), and rated their health as fair or poor (22.2%, 160/722 vs 8.2%, 15/183; all P<.001). A smaller proportion of subjects recruited through social media had earned a college degree (21.3%, 153/717 vs 62.3%, 114/183) and were married or in a domestic partnership (45.7%, 330/722 vs 72.1%, 132/183; all P<.001). Social media-based recruitment costs were US $14.63 per completed survey, compared with US $23.51 for clinic-based recruitment. CONCLUSIONS Web-based recruitment through a social networking platform is a feasible, inexpensive, and rapid means of recruiting a large, diverse sample of pregnant women for survey research.