Methods

Participant Recruitment

Participant recruitment began in September of 2024 is still underway. We are recruiting middle school students (in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades), caregivers of middle schools students, and teachers that primarily teach middle school across Southwestern Ohio, with the goal to reach a sample of 45 participants (15 on each group) that is diverse and representative of national and state levels for socioeconomic status, ethnic demographics, and population size (rural vs urban).

We are employing purposeful sampling procedures that include snowball, convenience and/or opportunistic sampling. The process began by identifying school districts in southwestern Ohio as low, high or average (compared to state/national data) in in two or more of the categories of socioeconomic status (SES) (such as median household income and food stamps/SNAP benefits); population sizes, and racial/ethnic demographics. Next, we contacted principals, assistant principals, and counselors of schools in locations of interest and asked them to share our recruitment flyer with teachers and families in their school community. In addition, we reached out to local libraries and community businesses (such as YMCAs) and asked them to display our flyer. When possible, we personaly visited locations to hang flyers. Finally, we are doing online recruitment through facebook community groups, which consists of identifying groups of interest (local to our region of interest and/or groups of parents or teachers) and posting our flyer inviting participation.

Facebook Recruitment

Principal Response Rate

When reaching out to principals for recruitment participants, only 1 principal had responded with Yes, 5 principals responded with No, 4 principals referred us to another recruitment method, and we had no response from 35 principals.

Contact Attempts before Librarians Respond "Yes"

For recruitment, it only took 1 attempt before 6 librarians offered to advertise our flyer, 2 attempts for 3 librarians, and 3 attempts for two librarians.

Interested Response Rate (Sept. 1, 2024 - Nov. 18, 2024)

At the time the poster was made, 3 candidates were excluded, we were waiting on a response from 5 individuals, 5 interviews were scheduled, and 9 participants had completed the study.

Recruitment Challenges

When online recruitment began there was a surge of individuals interested in interviews, but there were issues with legitimate participation including duplicate responders and non-eligible people. In addition, some of those that were interviewed from this sample seemed to have suspicious responses in the interview. In order to alleviate this, the survey now only accepts contact information from those in the southwest Ohio area. We also struggled with outreach to more rural areas. It was difficult to find public places, such as YMCA's and libraries, that may be willing to advertise the research. There is also a lack facebook groups in which posts could be made. Of those, we had issues with many Facebook groups blocking pages, especially parent groups. Some pages do not approve research posts at all as they suspect scams or they have more rules regarding those posts. There is also a lack of teacher groups and unions on Facebook. In addition, with extremely large groups (more prevalent in the more urban areas), the post can be lost before individuals may see it.

There were also issues specific to the different groups. Many principals were non-responsive, and of the ones who were responsive the teachers were not very responsive to them. Unfortunately, sites that are directly connected to teacher outreach are very costly. We faced issues reaching out to parents because the adults would fill out the interest form, but then not respond to follow-up communications or they wouldn't want to commit to the hour as their schedule gets busy or they lose interest. Similarly, while some students do reach out, their parents may be unwilling for them to participate or the parents may be non-responsive or unaware that their child posed interest in the study. In additon, the $20 compensation for participating in the research study may not be enough compensation for some individuals, however, our funding is limited.

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