Reducing Longitudinal Attrition Through Facebook

Attrition of subjects is a concern when designing longitudinal field studies. One way to potentially reduce attrition in longitudinal studies may be to use a social network. In this study, two groups are contrasted. One group of participants completed a survey online and was redirected to a Facebook page for the purposes of the study, and was then invited to become Facebook friends. The second group completed the survey using pen and paper. In the second phase of the study, 6 months later, hospitality managers who had become friends of the study on Facebook were contacted via Facebook, while those who completed the paper survey were contacted via their personal e-mail addresses. The Facebook group had a response rate of 51.4%, while the e-mail group had a response rate of 15.2%. Our results suggest that Facebook might be an effective means of minimizing attrition in longitudinal studies.