Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jan-Dec:58:469580211059305.
doi: 10.1177/00469580211059305.

Using Social Media as a Survey Recruitment Strategy for Post-Secondary Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Simran Purewal  1 , Paola Ardiles  1 , Erica Di Ruggiero  2 , John Vincent L Flores  1 , Sana Mahmood  3 , Hussein Elhagehassan  1
Affiliations

Using Social Media as a Survey Recruitment Strategy for Post-Secondary Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Simran Purewal et al. Inquiry. 2021 Jan-Dec.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly forced Canadian post-secondary students into remote learning methods, with potential implications on their academic success and health. In recent years, the use of social media to promote research participation and as a strategy for communicating health messages has become increasingly popular. To better understand how the pandemic has impacted this population, we used social media platforms to recruit students to participate in a national bilingual COVID-19 Health Literacy Survey. The purpose of the survey was to assess the health literacy levels and online information-seeking behaviors of post-secondary students in relation to the coronavirus. This paper outlines the social media recruitment strategies used for promoting participation in the survey among Canadian post-secondary students during the pandemic. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts were created to promote the online survey. The objective of this paper is to examine the use of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter as survey recruitment strategies tailored to students. Data analytics from these platforms were analyzed using descriptive statistics. We found that the most commonly used platform for survey dissemination was Twitter, with 64800 total impressions recorded over 3 months. The use of social media as a survey recruitment strategy showed promise in the current context of COVID-19 where many students are participating in online learning and for a study population that actively uses these platforms to seek out information.

Keywords: COVID-19; coronavirus; post-secondary students; social media; survey recruitment.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Instagram post from @COVID19SHLStudy.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Instagram post from @COVID19SHLStudy (English).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Instagram post from @COVID19SHLStudy (French).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Canadian Healthcare Network . COVID-19: A Canadian Timeline. Canadianhealthcarenetwork.ca. https://www.canadianhealthcarenetwork.ca/covid-19-a-canadian-timeline. Accessed January 12, 2021.
    1. The Canadian Press . A Timeline of Events in Canada’s Fight against COVID-19. Thestar.com. Published June 18, 2020 https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/06/18/a-timeline-of-events-in-c.... Accessed January 12, 2021.
    1. Mitic W, Rootman I. An Inter-sectoral Approach for Improving Health Literacy for Canadians. Victoria, BC: Public Health Association of British Columbia; 2012:4. https://nccdh.ca/resources/entry/an-inter-sectoral-approach-for-improvin.... Accessed October 20, 2020.
    1. Dadaczynski K, Okan O, Messer M, et al. Digital health literacy and web-based information-seeking behaviors of university students in Germany during the COVID-19 Pandemic: cross-sectional survey study. JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2021;23(1):e24097. https://www.jmir.org/2021/1/e24097/. Accessed February 1, 2021. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Drouin M, McDaniel BT, Pater J, Toscos T. How parents and their children used social media and technology at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and associations with anxiety. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2020;23(11):727-736. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/CYBER.2020.0284. Accessed February 1, 2021. - DOI - PubMed