Abstract
Background Asian-Americans are one of the most understudied racial/ethnic minority populations. To increase representation of Asian subgroups, researchers have traditionally relied on data collection at community venues and events. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has created serious challenges for in-person data collection. In this case study, we describe multi-modal strategies for online recruitment of U.S. Vietnamese parents, compare response rates and participant characteristics among strategies, and discuss lessons learned. Methods We recruited 408 participants from community-based organizations (CBOs) (n = 68), Facebook groups (n = 97), listservs (n = 4), personal network (n = 42), and snowball sampling (n = 197). Using chi-square tests and one-way analyses of variance, we compared participants recruited through different strategies regarding sociodemographic characteristics, acculturation-related characteristics, and mobile health usage. Results The overall response rate was 71.8% (range: 51.5% for Vietnamese CBOs to 86.6% for Facebook groups). Significant differences exist for all sociodemographic and almost all acculturation-related characteristics among recruitment strategies. Notably, CBO-recruited participants were the oldest, had lived in the U.S. for the longest duration, and had the lowest Vietnamese language ability. We found some similarities between Facebook-recruited participants and those referred by Facebook-recruited participants. Mobile health usage was high and did not vary based on recruitment strategies. Challenges included encountering fraudulent responses (e.g., non-Vietnamese). Perceived benefits and trust appeared to facilitate recruitment. Conclusions Facebook and snowball sampling may be feasible strategies to recruit U.S. Vietnamese. Findings suggest the potential for mobile-based research implementation. Perceived benefits and trust could encourage participation and may be related to cultural ties. Attention should be paid to recruitment with CBOs and handling fraudulent responses.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | e0256074 |
Journal | PloS one |
Volume | 16 |
Issue number | 8 August |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 2021 |
Funding
This work is supported by the American Psychological Foundation 2019 Visionary Grant and the American Association for Cancer Education 2019 Grant in Research, Education, Advocacy, and Direct Service (READS), the Grants-in-Aid program from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the Professional Development Support Fund at Emory University, and the Healthcare Innovation Program Student-Initiated Project Grant at the Georgia Clinical & Translational Science Alliance (CTSA). The Georgia CTSA is supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number UL1TR002378. Our data collection receives support from the Center for AIDS Research at Emory University (P30AI050409). Ms. Vu is supported by the US National Cancer Institute (5F31CA243220-02), a 2020-2021 PEO Scholar Award, and the 2020-2021 Student Fellowship in Patient Engagement from the Society of Public Health Education. Dr. Berg is supported by the US National Cancer Institute (R01CA215155-01A1; R01CA179422-01; R01CA239178-01A1), the US Fogarty International Center/National Institutes of Health (1R01TW010664-01), and the US National Institute on Environmental Health Science/Fogarty International Center (D43ES030927-01). Dr. Bednarczyk is supported in part by the US National Cancer Institute (1R37CA234119-01). Open-access publication support was made possible in part by the Research Reimbursement Award from grant 3P30CA076292 (Geographic Management of Cancer Health Disparities Program (GMaP) Region 2) funded by the National Cancer Institute.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General