Recruiting Teenage Participants for an Online Security Experiment: A Case Study Using Peachjar

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of recruiting teenage participants for usable privacy and security research using an online school flier service. It presents a case study of recruiting teens via Peachjar for an online experiment on recognizing YouTube scams, paired with an adult sample recruited through Prolific. The findings show Peachjar can yield a geographically diverse teen sample (55 participants) but requires thorough anti-spam design and may incur higher costs per participant than other online methods. The authors offer practical recommendations for sampling, security, and lead-time management, and discuss potential improvements such as incentive strategies to increase parental engagement.

Abstract

The recruitment of teenagers for usable privacy and security research is challenging, but essential. This case study presents our experience using the online flier distribution service Peachjar to recruit minor teenagers for an online security experiment. By distributing fliers to 90 K-12 schools, we recruited a diverse sample of 55 participants at an estimated cost per participant of $43.18. We discuss the benefits and drawbacks of Peachjar, concluding that it can facilitate the recruitment of a geographically diverse sample of teens for online studies, but it requires careful design to protect against spam and may be more expensive than other online methods. We conclude by proposing ways of using Peachjar more effectively.

Figures (3)

• Figure 1: Poster used to recruit parents of teenage participants.
• Figure 2: Distribution of median household 2022 income at Peachjar billing zip codes as of May 2024. 82 school districts located in zip codes where no ACS data was available were excluded. An older list of schools from November 2023 was used for sampling.
• Figure 3: Distribution of number of schools in each school district as of May 2024. Categorizations are provided by Peachjar