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Background Recruiting and retaining participants in randomised controlled trials (RCTs) is challenging. Digital tools, such as social media, data mining, email or text-messaging, could improve recruitment or retention, but an overview of this research area is lacking. We aimed to systematically map the characteristics of digital recruitment and retention tools for RCTs, and the features of the comparative studies that have evaluated the effectiveness of these tools during the past 10 years. Methods We searched Medline, Embase, other databases, the Internet, and relevant web sites in July 2018 to identify comparative studies of digital tools for recruiting and/or retaining participants in health RCTs. Two reviewers independently screened references against protocol-specified eligibility criteria. Included studies were coded by one reviewer with 20% checked by a second reviewer, using pre-defined keywords to describe characteristics of the studies, populations and digital tools evaluated. Results We identified 9163 potentially relevant references, of which 104 articles reporting 105 comparative studies were included in the systematic map. The number of published studies on digital tools has doubled in the past decade, but most studies evaluated digital tools for recruitment rather than retention. The key health areas investigated were health promotion, cancers, circulatory system diseases and mental health. Few studies focussed on minority or under-served populations, and most studies were observational. The most frequently-studied digital tools were social media, Internet sites, email and tv/radio for recruitment; and email and text-messaging for retention. One quarter of the studies measured efficiency (cost per recruited or retained participant) but few studies have evaluated people’s attitudes towards the use of digital tools. Conclusions This systematic map highlights a number of evidence gaps and may help stakeholders to identify and prioritise further research needs. In particular, there is a need for rigorous research on the efficiency of the digital tools and their impact on RCT participants and investigators, perhaps as studies-within-a-trial (SWAT) research. There is also a need for research into how digital tools may improve participant retention in RCTs which is currently underrepresented relative to recruitment research. Registration Not registered; based on a pre-specified protocol, peer-reviewed by the project’s Advisory Board.

In this paper we describe the lessons learned when untrustworthy participants were included in a qualitative interview study. In online research, participants can more easily misrepresent their identity and volunteer for studies even if they do not meet inclusion criteria. The term “imposter participant” refers to dishonest participants who completely fake their identities or simply exaggerate their experiences in order to participate in qualitative studies. Untrustworthy participants are a threat to data quality, yet little has been published on how qualitative researchers should prevent and handle this unique methodological challenge. In this paper, we provide a detailed account of how specific issues with the research design create methodological challenges related to participant honesty when participants self-identify as meeting study inclusion criteria and participate in a virtual interview. Through our experiences as a doctoral student and dissertation supervisor, we offer lessons learned relating to recruiting online participants, collecting virtual interview data, and analyzing data for a qualitative study. Our experiences and reflections might help other qualitative researchers, including doctoral candidates and their supervising committees, work with internal review boards to prevent imposter participants and thereby contribute to the trustworthiness of their research.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, online recruitment became a critical component of qualitative research in health care fields. However, fraudulent participants targeting research incentives have become more prevalent in health studies, raising significant issues for research ethics, data integrity, and the inclusion of diverse patient voices. While qualitative health research aims to listen to and amplify patients’ and communities’ voices, such fraud can severely impact research quality and foster mistrust toward participants. This issue is particularly critical in qualitative studies, where careful communication, engagement, and mutual trust between researchers and participants are hallmarks of the research process, especially when working with populations considered marginalized. Behaviors that researchers may associate with fraudulent participants also appear in the communication patterns of groups considered marginalized, especially when discussing sensitive topics. This similarity could lead to misplaced suspicion, unintentionally disadvantaging populations considered marginalized when they attempt to share their experiences. In this paper, 3 qualitative nursing researchers reflect on their experiences with recruitment and data collection in recent studies and provide recommendations based on their experiences and a review of relevant literature. These include methods for addressing challenges related to potentially fraudulent participants and balancing ethical approaches with justice and inclusivity while preserving research integrity, drawing on existing strategies from previous studies facing similar issues. The paper also identifies unaddressed areas requiring future attention and highlights the importance of promoting inclusivity for diverse populations and populations considered marginalized who may be disproportionately affected by mistrust in participant integrity.

Internet and mobile health (mHealth) apps hold promise for expanding the reach of evidence-based health interventions. Research in this area is rapidly expanding. However, these studies may experience problems with recruitment and retention. Web-based and mHealth studies are in need of a wide-reaching and low-cost method of recruitment that will also effectively retain participants for the duration of the study. Online recruitment may be a low-cost and wide-reaching tool in comparison to traditional recruitment methods, although empirical evidence is limited. This study aims to review the literature on online recruitment for, and retention in, mHealth studies. We conducted a review of the literature of studies examining online recruitment methods as a viable means of obtaining mHealth research participants. The data sources used were PubMed, CINAHL, EbscoHost, PyscINFO, and MEDLINE. Studies reporting at least one method of online recruitment were included. A narrative approach enabled the authors to discuss the variability in recruitment results, as well as in recruitment duration and study design. From 550 initial publications, 12 studies were included in this review. The studies reported multiple uses and outcomes for online recruitment methods. Web-based recruitment was the only type of recruitment used in 67% (8/12) of the studies. Online recruitment was used for studies with a variety of health domains: smoking cessation (58%; 7/12) and mental health (17%; 2/12) being the most common. Recruitment duration lasted under a year in 67% (8/12) of the studies, with an average of 5 months spent on recruiting. In those studies that spent over a year (33%; 4/12), an average of 17 months was spent on recruiting. A little less than half (42%; 5/12) of the studies found Facebook ads or newsfeed posts to be an effective method of recruitment, a quarter (25%; 3/12) of the studies found Google ads to be the most effective way to reach participants, and one study showed better outcomes with traditional (eg in-person) methods of recruitment. Only one study recorded retention rates in their results, and half (50%; 6/12) of the studies recorded survey completion rates. Although online methods of recruitment may be promising in experimental research, more empirical evidence is needed to make specific recommendations. Several barriers to using online recruitment were identified, including participant retention. These unique challenges of virtual interventions can affect the generalizability and validity of findings from Web-based and mHealth studies. There is a need for additional research to evaluate the effectiveness of online recruitment methods and participant retention in experimental mHealth studies.

Family scientists can face the challenge of effectively and efficiently recruiting normative samples of parents and families. Utilizing the Internet to recruit parents is a strategic way to find participants where they already are, enabling researchers to overcome many of the barriers to in-person recruitment. The present study was designed to compare three online recruitment strategies for recruiting parents: e-mail Listservs, Facebook, and Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Analyses revealed differences in the effectiveness and efficiency of data collection. In particular, MTurk resulted in the most demographically diverse sample, in a short period of time, with little cost. Listservs reached a large number of participants and resulted in a comparatively homogeneous sample. Facebook was not successful in recruiting a general sample of parents. Findings provide information that can help family researchers and practitioners be intentional about recruitment strategies and study design.

This study examines discrimination of Arabic-named applicants in online recruitment procedures in the Netherlands. We develop and implement a new field experiment approach, posting fictitious résumés (n = 636) on two online résumé databases. Two phases of recruitment procedures are examined: employers' decisions to (1) view applicants' complete résumés after seeing short profiles and (2) contact applicants. The experiment covers both male and female applicants, three occupational levels, five sectors, and ten geographical regions, and consists of two waves. Results provide strong evidence of discrimination in the first phase (views). Résumés of Arabic-named applicants were requested less often, regardless of their education, gender, age, region, or sector, and for both websites and waves. Controlling for the number of times candidates' full résumés were viewed, there is less evidence of discrimination in the second phase (reactions). Yet, after two phases, the cumulative ethnic difference is considerable: Dutch-named applicants are 60 percent more likely to receive a positive reaction than Arabic-named applicants. We conclude that ethnic disparities in outcomes of recruitment procedures are substantial and arise already in the very first phase of the selection process. Hence, employers often do not even getto see Arabic-named applicants' résumés. Finally, discrimination is stronger in wave two, when the total number of views of résumés was lower, indicating lower labor demand.

The increased availability of the Internet has led to the emergence of new forms of political participation. Opinions differ, however, on whether this has led to a reinforcement of stratification patterns or to the political mobilization of new groups in society. To address this question, the authors conducted a latent class analysis of a U.S. representative sample that indicates that online activism is indeed a distinctive type of political participation. Analysis of the sociodemographic stratification of the identified participation types confirms the mobilization thesis regarding age and gender but finds that traditional socioeconomic status inequalities are reinforced in online political participation.

With the rapid development of Internet technology and computer technology, network applications have been developed more and more, and have penetrated into all walks of life in society. The emergence of the networking of the talent market has made the scale of online recruitment increase, and the amount of data on the Internet has become larger and larger, and online recruitment has become the main channel for corporate recruitment. Therefore, how to use the massive online recruitment data to quickly and accurately find the corresponding information and explore the hidden knowledge mode is a very valuable research topic. Data mining (DM) is a technology for data analysis for large amounts of data. It can discover hidden, hidden, and potentially useful knowledge hidden in the data from the vague, noisy, and random mass data, and build relevant Model, realize prediction, etc. The characteristics of data mining technology (DMT) are very suitable for the analysis of online recruitment information, research on large amounts of information, and find out the knowledge in it for decision support. This article aims to study the accurate job matching system of the online recruitment platform based on DMT. Based on the analysis of the advantages of online recruitment, related DMT and the design principles of the online recruitment platform system, the data collected by Weka DM tools are analyzed. Analyzing and getting useful job positions is just to provide job seekers and corporate-related recruiters with useful job information. The experimental results show that the online recruitment platform system can complete the collection of online recruitment position information, and can realize the DM function, which has good practical application value.