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Using Facebook to Recruit Parents to Participate in a Family Program to Prevent Teen Drug Use

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Abstract

Despite strong evidence that family programs are effective in preventing adolescent substance use, recruiting parents to participate in such programs remains a persistent challenge. This study explored the feasibility of using Facebook to recruit parents of middle school students to a self-directed family program to prevent adolescent drug use. The study used paid Facebook ads aiming to recruit 100 parents in Washington and Colorado using marijuana- or parenting-focused messages. All ad-recruited parents were also invited to refer others in order to compare Facebook recruitment to web-based respondent-driven sampling. Despite offering a $15 incentive for each successfully referred participant, the majority of the screened (70.4%) and eligible (65.1%) parents were recruited through Facebook ads. Yet, eligibility and consent rates were significantly higher among referred (76.6 and 57.3%, respectively) than Facebook-recruited parents (60.0 and 36.6%, respectively). Click-through rates on Facebook were higher for marijuana-focused than parenting-focused ads (0.72 and 0.65%, respectively). The final sample (54% Facebook-recruited) consisted of 103 demographically homogeneous parents (female, educated, non-Hispanic White, and mostly from Washington). Although Facebook was an effective and efficient method to recruit parents to a study with equal to better cost-effectiveness than traditional recruitment strategies, the promise of social media to reach a diverse population was not realized. Additional approaches to Facebook recruitment are needed to reach diverse samples in real-world settings and increase public health impact of family programs.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant (R21DA039466) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The funding organization had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, analysis, or preparation of data; or preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript. The content of this paper is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of NIDA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Development Research Group, School of Social Work, University of Washington, 9725 3rd Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98115, USA

    Sabrina Oesterle, Marina Epstein & Kevin P. Haggerty

  2. Seattle Children’s Research Institute, Center for Child Health Behavior and Development, Seattle, WA, USA

    Megan A. Moreno

  3. Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Megan A. Moreno

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  1. Sabrina Oesterle
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  2. Marina Epstein
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Correspondence to Sabrina Oesterle.

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Informed consent was obtained from all study participants. All procedures in this study were approved by and in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Washington institutional review board and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Oesterle, S., Epstein, M., Haggerty, K.P. et al. Using Facebook to Recruit Parents to Participate in a Family Program to Prevent Teen Drug Use. Prev Sci 19, 559–569 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-017-0844-7

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