Social media as a recruitment method to reach a diverse sample of bereaved parents

Background: Recruiting a diverse group of parents who are grieving the loss of a child into research is challenging. Social media users represent all demographic groups in the United States. Online platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, may be one potential method to reach and recruit a diverse group of bereaved parents. To our knowledge, this is the first known article to describe social media as a recruitment mechanism for bereaved parents. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe 1) how the social media platforms of Facebook and Twitter were used to recruit bereaved parents into a cross-sectional, online survey, and 2) the effectiveness of social media as a recruitment tool for this population. Conclusions: Social media has the potential to be an effective recruitment tool to reach a diverse group of users. More research is needed, however, to determine the best methods to reach fathers as well as racial and ethnic minorities.