Engaging Institutional Stakeholders to Develop and Implement Guidelines for Recruiting Participants in Research...

Area of Science:

• Clinical Research
• Digital Health
• Research Administration

Background:

• Limited regulatory guidance exists for using social media in participant recruitment.
• Developing stakeholder-informed procedures is essential for ethical and effective social media use in research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide replicable procedures for creating and implementing guidelines for social media recruitment in research.
• To establish a framework for ethical and effective social media utilization in clinical research.

Main Methods:

• Identified institutional stakeholders through university social media use cases.
• Conducted a scoping review of web materials from 19 peer institutions and 2 federal agencies.
• Gathered feedback from end-users (investigators, study coordinators) on developed policies.

Main Results:

• Engaged 7 representatives from 5 offices and 15 subject-matter experts as stakeholders.
• Scoping review identified 4 key themes to inform policy development.
• Implemented policies led to 39 advertising campaigns and enrollment of 2846 participants.

Conclusions:

• Developed policies and procedures enable research teams to leverage social media for increased recruitment.
• The transparent, stakeholder-informed process is replicable by institutional administrators.
• Guidelines support institutional needs for effective social media participant recruitment.