| Health promotion and risk reduction via the Internet has emerged over the past decade as a useful venue for addressing a variety of health-related concerns. As interest in conducting Web-based research grows, translation of traditional research methodologies to the Internet setting must be carefully evaluated. Because loss of participants in any study threatens internal validity and should be minimized as much as possible, the current study focused on retention strategies for online research. Specifically, 305 rural men in an online HIV/AIDS intervention were randomized into one of two reimbursement schedules (fixed or increasing) and one of three e-mail reminder types (standard, augmented, or bonus). E-mail reminders were similar in content, but the "augmented reminders" described items they could purchase with their reimbursements and "bonus reminders" offered an extra... |
