Recruiting participants for moderated research studies
General tips
- Recruiting participants for design research of government services is hard. We’re often looking for narrow groups of people. We also can’t use the same resources to recruit them as our commercial counterparts would. With these difficulties in mind, we suggest:
- Start finding participants as soon as you can. Ideally, you make a research plan, and then start recruiting participants. But in our work, it can take a long time to find the right participants. Begin sourcing as soon as you have a rough idea who you might want to speak to.
- Use many recruitment tactics in parallel. Because our needs are often so specific, some tactics may not pan out. Don’t wait until one fails to start another one. Try many tactics at the same time.
- At first, use the broadest possible recruiting criteria. After your success, start to narrow your sample. Imagine you are studying a UFO identification program. Start by recruiting anyone who could see a UFO (i.e. anyone!). Then look for people who have seen a UFO (a large, but narrower group). Only then look for people with experience with extraterrestrials (probably a much narrower group).
- Be cautious about repeat participants. Once you’ve found people, it’s tempting to ask for their help over and over again. But as the more they take part in research, the less good participants they are. They’ll learn about your product and try harder to please you. “Snowball” from whatever recruiting method works for you. When you start to get a few participants, ask them who else they know that meets your screening criteria. You can grow your sample quickly with a few, connected leads.
Helpful tactics
In rough order of CDS’s success with each tactic.
- Intercept recruitment in public places. Go to a place where your participants are and ask them to take part in your research.
- Works best in high traffic spaces, like universities, coworking spaces or malls.
- Usually the speediest tactic. Within a day, you can field many interviews.
- Doesn’t work as well for narrow audiences. For example, it’s easy to find potential victims of cybercrime. It’s harder to find recipients of a specific government benefit.
- Intercept recruitment in government offices. Go to service centres, area offices or other places where your partners’ clients go. Ask people to take part in your research.
- Works best in high traffic spaces, like waiting areas or hallways.
- Once up, this tactic is quick. But it can take a long time to get permission to recruit inside a government office.
- Works well for narrow audiences.
- Recruitment via related advocacy organizations, committees or panels. The clients of many government services join advocacy organizations related to their needs. For example, disability benefit recipients may join advocacy groups related to their disability. Likewise, the government often convenes committees or panels of constituent representatives. You can ask these organizations to send an invitation to their email list.
- Works best when organizations have interests aligned with yours.
- Also works best when we already have a friendly advocate within the organization.
- Although some researchers have success with this tactic, many don’t. Organizations are often slow to respond and protective of their members. Don’t count on this approach.
- Works well for narrow audiences.
- Pro tip: If you don’t get a response within a working business day, you never will. Follow up via phone and move onto other leads.
- Hire a participant recruitment company. Use a participant recruitment company to find participants. These companies often have large “panel” of participants. They can canvas the panel to find people that meet your needs.
- Quite fast once you’ve exchange money. Most recruiters can line up participants in a couple weeks time.
- Works best for broad recruitment criteria. You can get a bit narrower with recruiting companies than intercepting.
- More expensive than other options. Usually a hundred or two dollars per participant.
- Social media based recruitment. Post invitations social media spots (Facebook groups, Twitter, sub Reddits) you participants visit.
- Works best with motivated participants. It takes effort to notice your research and follow through on participating. Social media recruitment works, but participants usually trickle in.
- Not a particularly speedy tactic. Participants trickle in over the weeks following you post.
- May bias your sample towards self-motivated folks.
- Works best for broad, audiences, like intercept recruiting.
- Identify possible participants from existing administrative data sources. Services often have lists of customers and their email addresses. You may be able to contact them and invite them to take part in research.
- Works best when a service’s customers want to help a service improve.
- Often requires many levels of departmental approval.
- Only ethical if service customers have agreed to take part in research.
- Recruiting via an existing service website. Post a recruitment invitation on the existing service website.
- Works best with motivated participants. Like with social media recruitment, it takes effort for people to act on your invitation.
- Not speedy, although usually faster than social media based recruitment.
- May bias your sample towards self-motivated folks.
- Works best for broad, audiences, like intercept recruiting.
- Recruit friends and family that meet your screening criteria. Asking around for people who meet the selection criteria.
- We avoid this recruiting friends and family to take part in studies. People we recruit via our own networks are less likely to be honest with us. They’re more likely to be like us. This method is the most likely way to bias our sample.
- You cannot compensate friends or family who take part in research.
- But, you can ask friends and family if they know others who might help us. (People who you haven’t met before, but know people you have.) Although they may not be as diverse as participants recruited other ways.
- Last updated by Colin on July 29, 2019