Armaan Merchant
Pronouns: He/Him
Research Mentor(s): Lenette Jones
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Health Behavior and Biological Sciences / Nursing
Program: UROPF
Session: Session 4 (1:40pm – 2:30pm)
Authors: Armaan Merchant, Malcolm Draper, Korrey E. Monroe. BS, Mary Bashshur, Lenette M. Jones PhD, RN
Abstract
Background: African American (Black) women face health disparities that are disproportionate in comparison to their counterparts. In addition, there is a lack of research addressing the health of this specific population. Previous researchers have stated that diverse populations are hard to recruit, however, no efforts have been made to address this challenge. Purpose: To describe the development and implementation of our Facebook campaign to recruit African American women with hypertension for health research. Methods: We created a Facebook campaign to recruit African American women. As a team, we selected 8 photos for our advertisements that were representative of our target population. In addition, four captions were created to be paired with the photos. A Qualtrics survey was linked to the advertisements so that when an individual clicked on the advertisement, they could also complete a screening survey to determine their eligibility for our upcoming studies. The average cost for our advertisements ranged from 40 to 94 cents per click Results: The data from our campaign suggest that this was an efficient method in recruiting our target population of African American women. The Facebook campaign generated 168,287 impressions (# of times the advertisement was displayed), 8,064 clicks on the advertisement, and was able to reach 83,249 Facebook users who saw our advertisement at least once. The average cost per click was .66 cents by the end of the campaign. Conclusion: This study may be used as a guide for other researchers who would like to recruit diverse populations. The success of recruiting diverse populations may result in reducing health disparities and increasing health equity in society.
