Using Facebook and Instagram to Recruit Web Survey Participants: A Step-by-Step Guide and Application

Abstract

In many countries and contexts, survey researchers are facing decreasing response rates and increasing survey costs. Data collection is even more complex and expensive when rare or hard-to-reach populations are to be sampled and surveyed. In such cases alternative sampling and recruiting approaches are usually needed, including non-probability and online convenience sampling. A rather novel approach to recruiting rare populations for online and mobile-device surveys uses advertisements on social media networks. This paper provides a step-by-step guide on how to recruit web-survey participants via ads on Facebook and Instagram – two of the largest social networks worldwide. Researchers may use this paper as a starting point for setting up their own recruiting campaigns. Moreover, the paper describes the results of fieldwork for a research project in which lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer (LGBTQ) web-survey participants in Germany were recruited via ads on social media.