Pedersen ER, Helmuth ED, Marshall GN, Schell TL, PunKay M, Kurz J. (2015). Using Facebook to recruit young adult veterans: Online mental health research. JMIR Research Protocols, 4(2), e63. PMID: 26033209.
Despite the high rates of mental health problems among young veterans of Operations Enduring Freedom (OEF), Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and New Dawn (OND), few young veterans seek treatment from the Veterans Administration. Consequently, few studies of interventions for mental health problems enroll young veterans. This study examined the feasibility of using Facebook to recruit young OEF/OIF/OND veterans for research. The authors posted advertisements on Facebook with a short description of the study and a link to a mental health survey. The Facebook advertisements ran for 24 days. During that time, 1.58 million Facebook users saw the advertisement and 16,658 unique individuals clicked on the link to the survey. Only 1,023 of those individuals were validated as veterans. Of those veterans, 79% completed the majority of the survey. The researchers compared the demographics of their sample to the demographics of the entire U.S. OEF/OIF/OND veteran population. Compare to the entire population of OED/OIF/OND veterans, the sample recruited online contained a higher percentage of Hispanic/Latino veterans, and veterans in the Army or Marines. Based on survey results, between 20% and 50% of the veterans met criteria for depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Less than one-third had received treatment during the past year. Results support the feasibility of recruiting young veterans from Facebook for research studies.