Effectiveness of recruitment strategies for a social media literacy E-intervention for young adults with body dissatisfaction: cost, time, diversity, and completion.

Digital interventions are becoming increasingly popular for the treatment of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. However, participant recruitment to online interventions poses a challenge. This study examined differences between a variety of recruitment strategies to a digital intervention in terms of number of participants recruited, cost, study personnel time, completion rates, and demographic characteristics of participants.Participants (N = 395) aged 18-25 years (79.5% women) were recruited to take part in an online body image intervention and asked how they heard about the program (e.g., through Facebook, a flyer on a university campus). Strategies of recruitment, including researcher time required and cost were recorded throughout the project. Cost and time effectiveness, study and intervention completion rates, and participant demographics for each recruitment approach were explored.Facebook paid advertising recruited n = 241 participants (78.0% women), with $29.81 cost per completer, and researcher time per completer at 2.41 minutes. Facebook unpaid advertising was also effective, recruiting n = 130 participants (78.5% women), with $0.00 external cost per completer, and time per completer at 20.43 minutes. Other strategies, both online and face-to-face, were far less effective in recruiting participants. Men proved difficult to recruit using any strategy.Facebook advertising was an effective tool for recruiting young adults to this online intervention, although further research should identify effective strategies to recruit men for similar interventions.