A guideline on how to recruit respondents for online surveys using Facebook and Instagram: Using hard-to-reach health workers as an example
Social Networking Sites (SNS) offer survey scientists a relatively new tool to recruit participants, especially among otherwise hard-to-reach populations. Facebook and Instagram, in particular, allow the distribution of advertisements to specific subsets of their users at low cost. Researchers can use such targeted advertisements to guide participants to their online questionnaires. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have shown that this approach can be successfully applied to a range of different target groups. However, a certain familiarity with the tools and mechanisms provided by Meta is necessary to employ this sampling method. Therefore, in this guideline, we will first give a general introduction to sampling via advertisements on Facebook and Instagram before providing detailed instructions on the implementation of such a recruitment campaign. This will be followed by a brief summary of a recent study conducted by GESIS using Meta's platforms to recruit professionals in the German health care sector. Finally, we provide recommendations with respect to the reporting of methodological parameters when using this approach, propose a flowchart to visualize sample sizes at different points during the recruitment process and offer a glossary containing definitions of essential terms researchers are confronted with when using Meta's advertisement interface.
Pötzschke, Steffen, Weiß, Bernd, Daikeler, Jessica, Silber Henning and Beuthner, Christoph (2023). A guideline on how to recruit respondents for online surveys using Facebook and Instagram: Using hard-to-reach health workers as an example. Mannheim, GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (GESIS-Survey Guidelines). DOI: 10.15465/gesis-sg_en_045
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