Using Social Media to Recruit Participants for Scholarly Research: Lessons from African Female Immigrants in the United States

Abstract

Social scientists are increasingly using social media to conduct research and to recruit subjects for research studies. Prior research seems to suggest that using social media is particularly helpful when it comes to recruiting participants from hard-to-reach populations such as immigrants. In this study, we examine how social media platforms (i.e., Facebook and WhatsApp) were used to recruit participants for a study, which examined Kenyan immigrants’ perceptions of the police. Within the context of criminal justice research, the inclusion of African immigrants in research is important as their experiences and perceptions of justice get muted when compared to the experiences of blacks in general. We found that when conducting research among this group of immigrants, social media was instrumental in facilitating the recruitment of participants. Moreover, we discovered that building rapport with the participants and clearly articulating the objectives of the study was important. Implications for research are discussed.

Keywords:

• Hard-to-reach populations
• immigrants
• social media
• non-probability sampling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Quota sampling is another type of non-probability sampling techniques, but we will not discuss it in this paper.

2 WhatsApp is a messaging and voice-over-IP service owned by Facebook, Inc. It allows users to send text messages and voice messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, and other content for free when users are connected to the internet.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joselyne L. Chenane

Joselyne Chenane Nkogo is an assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Her research interests include police/citizen relations, race and justice, neighborhood contexts and crime, and immigration.

Queencilla Hammond

Queencilla Hammond is a doctoral candidate in the School of Criminology and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Her Master of Science degree is from the department of Criminal Justice at Illinois State University. She is primarily interested in domestic violence, mental health among survivors of domestic violence and incarcerated female populations.