Contemporary Views of Research Participant Willingness to Participate and Share Digital Data in Biomedical Research

Abstract

Importance: Using social media to recruit participants is a common and cost-effective practice. Willingness to participate (WTP) in biomedical research is a function of trust in the scientific team, which is closely tied to the source of funding and institutional connections. Objective: To determine whether WTP and willingness to share social media data are associated with the type of research team and online recruitment platform. Design, Setting, and Participants: This mixed-methods longitudinal survey and qualitative study was conducted over 2 points (T1 and T2) using Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform. Participants were US adults aged 18 years or older who use at least 1 social media platform. Recruitment was stratified to match race/ethnicity proportions of the 2010 US Census. The volunteer sample consisted of 914 participants at T1, and 655 participants completed the follow-up survey 5 months later (T2). Main Outcomes and Measures: Outcomes were (1) past experience with online research and sharing social media data for research; (2) WTP in research advertised online; (3) WTP in a study sponsored by a pharmaceutical company, a university, or a federal agency; and (4) willingness to share social media data. Opinions were solicited regarding the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation statute, which came into effect between T1 and T2. Results: Of 914 participants completing the first survey (T1), 604 (66.1%) were aged 18 to 39 years and 494 (54.0%) were female. Of these, 655 participants (71.7%) responded at T2. While 680 participants (74.4%) indicated WTP in biomedical research, only 454 (49.3%) were willing to share their social media data. Participants were significantly less likely to participate in federally sponsored (odds ratio [OR], 0.58; 95% CI, 0.51-0.64; P