Naslund JA, Aschbrenner KA, Marsch LA, McHugo GJ, Bartels SJ. (2015). Crowdsourcing for conducting randomized trials of internet delivered interventions in people with serious mental illness. Contemporary Clinical Trials, Advance online publication. PMID: 26188164.
Online crowdsourcing for research studies is defined as the act of soliciting large numbers of people through online advertisements to get a self-selected group of participants for a study. Often participants are then enrolled in the study, receive an intervention, and complete research assessments entirely through the internet. This systematic review examined whether online crowdsourcing is a feasible and acceptable method for enrolling participants and collecting data from individuals with severe mental illness (SMI), such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or psychosis. After systematically searching online databases, the authors found seven randomized controlled trials using crowdsourcing methods to study interventions for individuals with SMI. These studies predominately recruited participants by posting online advertisements. Participants in all seven studies received web-based interventions, which were mostly adaptations of face-to-face interventions. Many of these studies included peer support communities as a component of the intervention. These studies collected information on a wide variety of health outcomes, including depressive symptoms, medication adherence, anxiety, parental stress, and social support. Overall, outcomes were positive and the online interventions appeared to consistently improve mental health symptoms, compare to comparison conditions. Comparison conditions included waitlist control groups, psychoeducation websites, and attentional controls. Most studies were of moderate to high quality, but had high attrition rates. Online crowdsourcing appears to be an acceptable and feasible method for conducting research with individuals diagnosed with SMI.