Increasing Hispanic Participation in Cognitive Research: An Examination of a Decade of Web-Based Recruitment into MindCrowd

Abstract

Introduction: The research community has struggled to successfully recruit and retain Hispanic participants into research studies. The purpose of our study is to describe Hispanic enrollment into our study across the past decade. We sought to identify trends in Hispanic engagement in internet-based recruitment over three distinct time periods including the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: MindCrowd (MC) is a web-based research study that aims to identify potential factors influencing age-related cognitive decline and disease. The MC platform was launched on 01/2013 and as of 7/2023 has 403,633 participants. To explore Hispanic recruitment, we considered three different cohorts: 01/2013 through 03/2020 labeled as “MC1”, 04/2020 through 05/2022 labeled “MC-C19”, and 07/2022 to 07/2023 labeled “MC2”. We compared these three cohorts and examined the individual cohort demographics. Results: For the entire study, 22,067 (6%) identified as Hispanic. MC2 has demonstrated an increase in percent Hispanic recruitment compared to MC1 (8.0% vs 4.4%, respectively). Hispanic participation by U.S. State has a strong correlation with Hispanic population size in respective U.S. States (R = 0.9). Additionally, Hispanic recruitment during the COVID-19 pandemic increased. Conclusions: Improvement in internet-based Hispanic recruitment over time suggests the potential of innovative strategies to enhance their representation in health research.