Brie Noffsinger, “Recruitment of Young Adults for Rural E-Cigarette Use Research”
Mentor: Joshua Gwon, Nursing
Poster #112

Young adults (YAs, aged 18-24y years) are the population group that uses Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS, also known as e-cigarettes) the most and the use is particularly more increasing in rural areas than urban counterparts. This is a major concern as YAs’ ENDS use is a gateway effect to use of traditional tobacco products in their later year, so there is an increasing need for effective ENDS cessation interventions for YAs in rural communities. The purpose of this study is to describe recruitment strategies that we used for a series of ENDS-relevant projects for YAs in rural areas and results from these recruitment methods, and to provide methodological considerations to aid researchers improving recruitment of YAs in rural areas for ENDS use control studies. For our ENDS use-related studies, we distributed the study invite emails by using (a) student directory data from universities/colleges in rural counties of the study states, (b) being assisted from leadership offices at university/college, (c) regional tobacco control support networks, and (d) recontacting participants in the previous ENDS-use study. We recruited 1,434, 1,535, 32, and 9 participants respectively by each recruitment method. Student directory data are accessible, but can cost approximately $100 to $200. You can receive assistance from leadership offices (e.g., Student Affairs) in advertising the study, but conversations with leadership offices may take long and you cannot calculate the number of individuals reached. You can recruit YAs not enrolled in universities/colleges if regional tobacco control support networks display study flyers in local face-to-face events, but the number of recruited participants may be small. You can consider recontacting participants in previous studies for your current projects, but additional consent steps are needed in previous studies. Researchers need to consider these recruitment methods for YAs who use ENDS in rural areas for future studies.