I am planning a pilot for a psychophysiological study. I happen to have a lot of Facebook friends, and wonder whether it would be okay to make a post to ask for people who would be willing and able to participate. This is my first time running a study. Is this an acceptable way to get participants for a pilot or not, and why?
Thank you!
The most important thing is how you gauge the suitability and preparedness of the persons to be part of your study and not be a hinderance in any way.
The application of this method runs against the principle of randomization ('friends'), which is a basic requirement of experimental science. I do not see the problem in facebook itself, but in a possible selection bias for such a pilot study in psychophysiology.
If it is not objectionable in anyway, then I think there should be no problem.
If it fits the sample representativeess, why not? You can also look for different fb groups thacan, by name, be suitable. That's how we are right now reaching young emigrants from Croatia.
I don't see any problem with that. You can post a link to an online questionnaire on your Facebook page and ask your Facebook friends to respond to the questionnaire anonymously and voluntarily.
Probably fine in principle for a pilot to check everything works. Not that different to getting your flatmate to have go on it, just don't use the data in your final analyses. Nevertheless, your IRB might view it differently.
Dear Sephra,
first I very much agree with Srdjan's answer and strongly recommend actually reading the article he mentioned by Kosinski et al (2015) on "Facebook as a research tool for the Social Sciences: Opportunities, Challenges, Ethical Considerations, and Practical Guidelines" published in American Psychologist !
Also, I'd recommend you closely check beforehand with the ethics board of your institution.
This is because formal approvement of design and conduct of your study by the respective ethics board usually is required for
(a) publication in most of the international journals covering research in the humanities, as well as
(b) for grant application procedures, and - in most cases also -
(c) by universities' administrations responsible for acquitting7rejecting research proposed by students as materials for their (PhD-) thesis.
Regards,
Klaus Blischke
If you were to state up front that you ob- tained your subjects from your facebook, okay, otherwise , no. If facebook were a random population, everyone would (theoretically) be in the facebook "pool".
There may be a trait that causes people to join facebook. A counfounding variable. There may be a trait that causes people not to join facebook( it may be hard to believe but there are many who dont join facebook)
There could be some variable in your sample of facebook friends ---mr/ms sheubers facebook friends became friends because of x
Your study could be something like
"The psychophysiological effects of x upon a sample of my facebook population"
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