Maintaining data quality when using social media for recruitment: Risks, rewards, and steps forward

Social media is increasingly used to recruit participants for research studies and has been shown to be an effective means of recruitment, in terms of cost, time, and accessibility. However, researchers often struggle with the challenges of using social media for recruitment, as minimal guidance is available. Without careful consideration of the risks to data quality when using social media as a recruitment tool, the overall results of studies can be compromised. This paper provides three hypothetical scenarios based in part on the real-world experiences of researchers using social media-based recruitment (SMR) methods. The scenarios serve as a discussion and learning opportunity for researchers to identify data quality issues with SMR and postulate how issues can be mitigated. Inexperience with SMR can lead to severe flaws in data collection, which can be mitigated early in the study process with appropriate measures in place. Researchers need to proactively educate themselves and take measures to avoid common pitfalls associated with SMR to achieve robust data quality and research integrity.