The ethics of recruiting, retaining and tracing research participants online. Research Summary

This report presents a summary of findings from the project, ‘The ethics of recruiting, retaining and tracing research participants online’. This project was funded and conducted by La Trobe University between 2016 to 2018. The research aimed to identify what online strategies were used to recruit, retain and trace participants in research, what concerns researchers and HREC members had about using the internet to recruit, retain and trace research participants, and what information researchers and HREC members used to guide decisions about the ethical appropriateness of online research. The research was conducted in three phases: (1) scoping review of the literature in parent, child and family research; (2) qualitative interviews with eight public health researchers and seven HREC members; and (3) online survey of 401 researchers and/or HREC members in Australia.