Participant Recruitment in Social Work: A Social Media Approach

Abstract

With the widespread adoption of social media, researchers are finding new ways to conduct research involving human subjects. Health-related fields have begun to use social media for participant recruitment. However, the social work profession has been slow to adopt the use of social media recruitment techniques. This article describes experiences of a team of social work researchers who used social media to recruit participants for a national survey of social workers using four social media platforms to recruit participants: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Reddit. After three weeks of recruitment, 1,757 participants from all 50 states and the District of Columbia had completed the survey. Facebook and LinkedIn were the most effective social media platforms for recruitment. Authors discuss these results in light of their limitations to provide implications for future research using social media within the fields of social work and related health professions.