Beyond traditional advertisements: leveraging Facebook's social structures for research recruitment.

The results of the study demonstrate that leveraging the social structures of Facebook for health-related research was feasible for obtaining small samples appropriate for qualitative research but not for obtaining large samples needed for quantitative research. The content of interactions with members of the target population prompted ethical deliberations concerning suitable target communities and appropriate boundaries between researchers and participants. Widespread replication of this method would benefit from a broad discussion among researchers, social media users, social media companies, and experts in research ethics to address appropriate protocols for such interactions.