Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Methodol. Sep 20, 2023; 13(4): 210-222
Published online Sep 20, 2023. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v13.i4.210
Utilization of online systems to promote youth participation in research: A methodological study
Marie Salem, Lance Pollack, Alex Zepeda, Kathleen P Tebb
Marie Salem, Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, United States
Lance Pollack, Division of Prevention Science, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94105, United States
Alex Zepeda, Research, Los Angeles Trust for Children's Health, Los Angeles, CA 90017, United States
Kathleen P Tebb, Department of Pediatrics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, United States
Author contributions: Salem M and Tebb KP performed the research; Tebb KP, and Pollack L designed the research study; Pollack L analyzed the data; Salem M, Tebb KP, and Zepeda A wrote the manuscript; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Dissemination and Implementation Award, No. DI-2020C2-20372.
Institutional review board statement: This basic study was approved by the Institutional Review Board ethics committee at University of California San Francisco (Review Board Number: 10-02730).
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at marie.salem@ucsf.edu. Participant consent was not obtained for data sharing, but all data collected was anonymized and risk of identification is low.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Marie Salem, MPH, Research Scientist, Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California San Francisco, 490 Illinois St, San Francisco, CA 94158, United States. mariesalemk@gmail.com
Received: January 27, 2023
Peer-review started: January 27, 2023
First decision: April 20, 2023
Revised: June 9, 2023
Accepted: July 6, 2023
Article in press: July 6, 2023
Published online: September 20, 2023
Processing time: 235 Days and 10.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Online systems for health research have the potential to reach larger and more diverse audiences than traditional in-person recruitment methods. It can also decrease the cost and time necessary to recruit participants in person. This paper provides a case study of the online system developed and used to evaluate Health-E You/Salud iTuTM, an interactive mobile sexual and reproductive health application (app) for adolescent females used in conjunction with school-based health centers. This study demonstrates the strengths and limitations of online systems used for research.