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Facebook Advertising to Recruit Young, Urban Women into an HIV Prevention Clinical Trial

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Abstract

Advertising via Facebook to elicit involvement in clinical trials has demonstrated promise in expanding geographic reach while maintaining confidentiality. The purpose of this study is to evaluate Facebook advertising to reach at-risk, predominately African American or Black women in higher HIV prevalence communities for an HIV prevention clinical trial, and to compare baseline characteristics to those recruited on-the-ground. Maintaining confidentiality and the practical aspects of creating and posting ads on Facebook are described. The advertising strategy targeted multicultural affinities, gender, age, interest terms, and zip codes. We report on results during 205 days. A total of 516,498 Facebook users viewed the ads an average of four times, resulting in 37,133 clicks to the study website. Compared to 495 screened on-the-ground, 940 were screened via Facebook ads, of these, half (n = 477, 50.74%) were high risk, and of those at risk, 154 were randomized into the 6-month clinical trial. Black women comprised 71.60% (n = 673) of the total screened online. Roughly twice as many Black women screened via Facebook compared to on-the-ground, yet, the percentage at high risk was similar. Preliminary data suggest that the extent to which ad headlines and photos tap into authentic social experience, advertising on Facebook can extend geographic reach and provide a comparative sample to women recruited on-the-ground.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Director of the Office of Information Security at Northeastern University, Mr. Mark Nardone, and the Director of Human Subject Research Protection, Nan C. Regina. We extend our gratitude to the participants in this study and to the contributions of research assistants who helped design and create and monitor the ads: Siobon Barrett, Akira Brown, Akirah Charles-Brown, Shanice Henry, Diana Jacques, Emily King, Nenser Krua, Circe Le Compte, and Angelica Recierdo.

Funding

This study is funded by the National Institutes of Nursing Research NR014632.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Nursing, Faculty Scholar, Institute on Urban Health Research and Practice, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Rachel Jones

  2. School of Nursing, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Lorraine J. Lacroix

  3. College of Arts, Media and Design, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Eloni Porcher

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  1. Rachel Jones
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  2. Lorraine J. Lacroix
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Correspondence to Rachel Jones.

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The authors report no real or perceived vested interest that relate to this article that could be construed as a conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Jones, R., Lacroix, L.J. & Porcher, E. Facebook Advertising to Recruit Young, Urban Women into an HIV Prevention Clinical Trial. AIDS Behav 21, 3141–3153 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-017-1797-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-017-1797-3

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