Recruiting Participants with Chronic Conditions in Second Life

This chapter outlines the recruitment methods used and their success. Effective methods can be used to identify best practices for recruiting in Second Life for both general and chronic‐condition populations in Second Life, in addition to providing recommendations for others conducting similar studies. The authors developed a recruitment protocol based on best practices in recruiting special and hard‐to‐reach populations as well as methods that have previously been used in virtual‐world research. Second Life has great promise as an alternative way to reach those with chronic conditions. Virtual worlds allow people to integrate various aspects of their virtual life, which reduces the burden to participate in this sort of study. However, recruiting people in this setting has special considerations and understanding them is paramount to the success of a recruitment effort.