Outreach Through Facebook: Do Patients With Atopic Dermatitis Provide Clinically Relevant Information When Recruited for Surveys on Social Media?

Abstract

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common chronic skin disease with a prevalence of up to 20% in children and up to 10% in adults [1]. There has been an increasing focus on the impact on the quality of life of the patients, family members, and caregivers [2], yet performing surveys to elucidate this is often laborious, time-consuming, and expensive. Social media has been used as a new platform for gaining insights into diseases through surveys, but for AD this has not been adequately tested. We have investigated the results obtained from a web-based survey recruiting respondents from a Facebook group hosted by the Danish Atopic Eczema Patients’ Organization (DAEPO) concerning whether it was representative of the population and if it returned relevant information on their disease.