ISSN: 2161-1165

Epidemiology: Open Access
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  • Research Article   
  • Epidemiol 2013, Vol 3(2): 123
  • DOI: 10.4172/2161-1165.1000123

“Liking” Social Networking Sites – Use of Facebook as a Recruitment Tool in an Outbreak Investigation, The Netherlands, 2012

Georgia Ladbury1,2*, Saskia Ostendorf3, Toos Waegemaekers3 and Susan Hahné1
1Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), , Bilthoven, The Netherlands
2European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training (EPIET), European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), , Stockholm, Sweden
3Municipal Health Service Gelderland Midden, , Arnhem, The Netherlands
*Corresponding Author : Georgia Ladbury, Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Bilthoven, The Netherlands, Email: gladbury@gmail.com

Received Date: Apr 09, 2013 / Accepted Date: Jun 13, 2013 / Published Date: Jun 15, 2013

Abstract

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as Facebook offer health researchers a novel means to reach and engage with the public. Following a mumps outbreak in a Dutch village after a Youth Club party organised via the Facebook Events facility, we used Facebook to recruit attendees to our outbreak investigation. After a poor response using traditional means of publicising the study, we opened a Facebook account under the study name, sent private messages about the study to all individuals invited to the party via the Facebook Event, and regularly posted the questionnaire web-link to the online notice boards (“Wall”) on the Youth Club and our own Facebook accounts. We concurrently incentivised participation using gift vouchers but only directly informed individuals who had responded “Yes” to the Event of the incentive. Participant numbers subsequently increased from ten to 60 (response ~60%). 80% of participants reported hearing about the study via Facebook. Although impossible to disentangle the effects of the active Facebook protocol and the incentive, Facebook offered a means of directly contacting attendees whilst avoiding advertising the incentive to non-attendees. SNSs can potentially make an important contribution to modern health research, and ethical codes of conduct should be updated to encompass their use.

Keywords: Social networks; Outbreaks; Recruitment; Facebook

Citation: Ladbury G, Ostendorf S, Waegemaekers T, Hahné S (2013) “Liking” Social Networking Sites – Use of Facebook as a Recruitment Tool in an Outbreak Investigation, The Netherlands, 2012. Epidemiol 3:123. Doi: 10.4172/2161-1165.1000123

Copyright: © 2013 Ladbury G, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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