Facebook Social Proof for Field Survey Participation

In Simple Words

Publicly displaying photos of peers receiving official university completion certificates on a community social media page leverages social proof, making potential recruits feel safe and eager to join because they see people like themselves participating.

Research question

Recruiting diaspora migrant populations for longitudinal financial tracking studies suffers from high refusal rates due to participant suspicion regarding fraud and data privacy.

Participants

N = 8,248 enrolled Filipino migrant workers in Dubai and Sharjah, UAE.

Study Design

Community social proof intervention maintaining a dedicated public Facebook page where photos of participants holding official university participation certificates were routinely posted alongside running participation totals.

Results

Social proof validation helped overcome initial refusal challenges, enabling successful enrollment of 8,248 participants and sustained engagement across 51,395 weekly survey responses over 30 weeks.

Takeaway

Publish photos of participants holding verified completion certificates on official social media channels to establish peer trust and boost recruitment in diaspora field research.

Read alongside the research

Plain-English glossary

Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.

Longitudinal study

A study that checks the same group of people at different times. This lets researchers examine how things change over time.

ExampleResearchers ask the same workers about their wellbeing at the start, after three months and after six months.

NICE · Longitudinal study ↗Read more about longitudinal study →

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