Recruiting Fathers for Parenting Research: An Evaluation of Eight Recruitment Methods and an Exploration of Fathers’ Motivations for Participation

SYNOPSIS

Objective. We evaluated eight recruitment methods (Craigslist, Facebook ads, Google AdWords, in-person, newspaper, parenting magazines, ResearchMatch, and direct mailing) in terms of their ability to accrue fathers of 3- to 7-year-old children into a laboratory-based behavioral trial for parents. The trial was related to child obesity risk and parental health behaviors.Design. Each recruitment method was implemented such that half its occurrences advertised for fathers only, and half advertised for mothers and fathers. Methods were evaluated in terms of number of fathers recruited, cost- and time-efficiency, response rates, and demographic characteristics of individuals recruited. We also assessed fathers’ and mothers’ motivations for participating in the study. 101 fathers and 260 mothers were recruited.Results. Father-targeted ads were essential for father recruitment; 79% of accruals from father-targeted ads were male, whereas only 14% of accruals from parent-targeted ads were male. Craigslist, ResearchMatch, and Facebook ads were the most cost-efficient for accruing fathers. A greater proportion of fathers was motivated by increasing fathers’ representation in research (16%) compared to mothers who wished to increase mothers’ representation in research (5.4%). Similar proportions of fathers and mothers were motivated by improving their parenting knowledge and improving their child’s health.Conclusions. Future researchers should employ father-targeted recruitment materials (rather than parent-targeted) that capitalize on fathers’ unique motivations for participating in research.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Brittany Hollister, William Kistler, Margaret Rose, Macred Gbenro, and Sarah Boland for aiding in recruitment and data collection for this project. The ideas and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone, and endorsement by the authors’ institutions is not intended and should not be inferred.

ADDRESS AND AFFILIATIONS

Haley E. Yaremych, Department of Psychology & Human Development, Vanderbilt University, PMB 552, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203-5721. Email: [email protected]

Susan Persky, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bldg 31 Rm B1B36, 31 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892. Email: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFORMATION

Conflict of interest disclosures

Each author signed a form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. No authors reported any financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the work described.

Ethical principles

The authors affirm having followed professional ethical guidelines in preparing this work. These guidelines include obtaining informed consent from human participants, maintaining ethical treatment and respect for the rights of human or animal participants, and ensuring the privacy of participants and their data, such as ensuring that individual participants cannot be identified in reported results or from publicly available original or archival data.

Role of the funders/sponsors

None of the funders or sponsors of this research had any role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

¹ In this study, we were required to collect participants’ race and ethnicity according to categories supplied by the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Participants classified themselves according to these categories. Therefore, the wording used in this report to describe our methods and results regarding race and ethnicity corresponds to the self-identified term chosen by participants. We note that such racial categories are, in general, problematic.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grant National Human Genome Research Institute [Z01-HG200396-05] from the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health.