Andrea Asmat Caro

Andrea Asmat Caro

Biography

Andrea Asmat is a rising junior at Purdue University studying Economics and Political Science, with interests in political economy, behavioral economics and finance. Growing up in Peru has influenced how she sees the impact of institutions, markets, and social conditions on daily life, especially in Latin America. As an MSRP intern in Political Science at MIT, Andrea is conducting research on survey methodology, political behavior, and urban accessibility, including projects that use digital tools such as WhatsApp-based surveys to enable more precise microtargeting in Peru and Brazil. Her past experience in financial operations, research, and student leadership has sparked her interest in linking quantitative analysis to real policy issues. Andrea wants to keep developing as a researcher and use evidence-based approaches to better understand social and economic problems.

Recruitment Through Social Media
Andrea Asmat¹, Daniel Hidalgo^2
1Department of Economics & Political Science, Purdue University
²Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Understanding public opinion and people’s experiences in specific local contexts can be
difficult when traditional surveys lack geographic precision needed to reach a small or hardto-
reach population. This MIT Summer Research project focuses on whether using WhatsApplinked
social media ads can help recruit local respondents more quickly and accurately. For this
stage, we selected geographically targeted areas in Peru and Brazil, and used Meta ads to target
participants and invite them to take surveys. The project also involved developing recruitment
plans for each geographic area, setting up automated survey flows, as well as testing different
experimental treatments and survey format, including audio responses, image questions and
location sharing prompts. Preliminary results suggest that Meta ads can recruit respondents
from narrowly defined geographic areas within relatively short periods, although response
volume and recruitment costs vary across locations. Geographic validation also indicates
that ad targeting alone does not perfectly identify residents of the intended area, emphasizing
the value of combining targeting with residence, local-knowledge, and location-verification
questions. Respondents also engaged with multiple WhatsApp-based formats. Overall, the
findings highlight that Social Media recruitment can be a flexible method for collecting
localized data in contexts where traditional approaches may be less precise.