Visibility Matters: Lessons from Nursing Leadership & Educational Leadership
January 4, 2024
Remembering Professor Anthony Grant 28 May 1954 – 3 Feb 2020
February 4, 2024
Insights and Reflections
In the broad and varied world of research—spanning fields such as business, healthcare, art, psychology, sociology, and beyond—recruiting participants is a critical step. Whether studying consumer behaviour, investigating human health, analysing artistic expression, or examining the complexities of the mind, finding the right participants is essential to gaining meaningful insights. Researchers, whether full-time professionals or those conducting studies occasionally, all face similar challenges in this process. This Insights and Reflections piece explores the difficulties of participant recruitment, highlighting key nuances and potential solutions.
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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In a 2015 article titled “Critical Analysis of Strategies for Determining Rigor in Qualitative Inquiry,” Dr. Janice Morse, an expert in nursing and anthropology and a pioneer in the study of behavior using qualitative research methods, highlighted the crucial role of effective participant recruitment in healthcare research. Researchers often rely on clinicians to enlist eligible participants for their studies. According to Dr Morse, successful recruitment is essential for testing hypotheses or addressing research questions, and insufficient recruitment poses a threat to the study’s validity, potentially compromising its rigour.
Similarly, drawing parallels to the insights shared by Dr. Janice Morse in her 2015 article, a 2019 study conducted by Daly, Hannon, and Brady, titled “Motivators and challenges to research recruitment – A qualitative study with midwives,” investigated the crucial role clinicians, specifically midwives in this study, play as research participants. The study revealed that, midwives, when serving as research participants, grapple with the intricate balance between clinical practice and research engagement. In the context of managing workload and engaging in multiple research projects simultaneously, midwives’ motivation to participate in research conducted by healthcare researchers is influenced by their perceptions of the study’s strength, clarity, potential impact on individual women, and its ability to enhance clinical practice.
In their study titled “One size does not fit all – overcoming barriers to participant recruitment in qualitative research,” Perez, Murphy, Wilkes, and Peters highlight challenges in recruiting participants, particularly due to perceived time constraints and burdens in studies exploring sensitive topics. The study team make an important point “Recruitment strategies that are helpful for one study may not be successful in another”.
In the context of participant recruitment for studies on disability and work, as explored in the article titled “Participant Recruitment for Studies on Disability and Work: Challenges and Solutions,” most often used methods include non-probability approaches for qualitative studies and sampling from existing worker databases for survey research. Even in this context, challenges in participant recruitment are evident through the use of multiple strategies and a heavy reliance on convenience sampling. Employers cite various barriers to participation, such as time pressures, fear of legal reprisal, and a perceived lack of relevance to the organisation. Connecting to the other studies discussed above and the concept that “one size does not fit all” in participant recruitment, it becomes apparent that the challenges and strategies in recruiting participants are diverse and context-dependent.
Bridging the gap between research and practice, Daly, Hannon, and Brady propose inviting clinicians to assess study information can enhance clarity, stimulate discussions on potential value, and minimise recruitment bias. Ensuring researchers are available to address clinicians’ specific questions further strengthens the practical implications for seamless integration into healthcare practice.
In studies focused on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, similar practical challenges emerge. Notably, contributors to an article titled “A behavioral insights approach to recruiting entrepreneurs for an academic study during the COVID-19 pandemic,” published in 2021 in the Journal of Business Venturing Insights, suggested that existing literature often concentrates on study and research design. However, it tends to overlook a practical problem—how to effectively persuade entrepreneurs to participate in entrepreneurship-related research projects. The researchers discovered that using a message based on the “descriptive norms” approach, which focuses on social norms, led to the highest percentage of participants clicking on the link to take part in their online survey. What’s intriguing is that, after experimenting with various messages and invitations, the recruitment message “50 visionaries like you have signed up for our study” yielded the highest click rate and engagement with their survey research.
Communication Matters | Floris Singletary, Speech Pathologist & Research Manager
In a brief video featured on the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association YouTube channel, Floris Singletary, an experienced Speech Pathologist and Research Manager at Brooks Rehabilitation emphasises the significance of developing credible and well-developed materials that effectively convey the key messages of research studies, making them accessible to both clinicians and participants. This emphasis holds great value in bridging the research-practice gap. Floris extends an invitation to researchers and institutions, encouraging them to leverage the potential of social media as a means to communicate the benefits of their research projects and as one of several avenues for participant recruitment.
If you’re a university or institution and you’re working with clinical partners, you have to realise what you are going to do to communicate your ideas within a clinical setting.
Practical Tips for Participant Recruitment
In this brief Insights and Reflections blog post, I attempted to delve into a snippet of the challenges and potential solutions entwined with research participant recruitment. Drawing from my own experiences as a researcher and practitioner, and incorporating insights shared by fellow professionals, this post underscores the significance of transparency, creativity, and strategic thinking in refining research participant recruitment efforts. As we navigate these insights, it becomes evident that acknowledging the limitations of one-size-fits-all approaches is paramount. This blog post concludes by offering concise recommendations that distill essential insights, providing practical guidance for researchers across disciplines striving to elevate their participant recruitment activities.
- ustomising Participant Recruitment for Varied Motivations: Tailor C your recruitment strategies to address the varied motivations and concerns of potential participants, recognising the diversity in their reasons for participating in research across different contexts.
- ontext-Aware Recruitment Tactics: Recognise C the nuanced and context-dependent nature of participant recruitment, addressing barriers and adopting tailored strategies.
- rafting Persuasive Messages for Participant Recruitment: Tailor C your recruitment messages to suit the distinctive characteristics and preferences of your target population. Consider the success observed in entrepreneur-related research, where a message like Tracy et al., (2021) A behavioral insights approach to recruiting entrepreneurs for an academic study during the COVID-19 pandemic50 visionaries like you have signed up for our study significantly increased engagement. This highlights the importance of crafting messages that resonate specifically with the demographic you intend to recruit, ensuring they feel personally connected and motivated to participate.
- reating Compelling Materials for Participant : Create C compelling and professionally crafted materials to effectively communicate the value of your research. Well-developed content enhances participant engagement, increasing the likelihood of successful recruitment.
- everaging Social Media Outreach: Leverage L social media for participant recruitment, tapping into its expansive reach to effectively communicate the benefits of your research projects. This approach widens engagement and enhances overall recruitment success.
- ransparent Communication- Adding Value to Participants’ Time: Ensure T clear and transparent communication in your research outreach. This not only respects participants’ time but also adds value for them and their organisations. By fostering transparency, you build trust and maximise the significance of their involvement in your study.
Sources:
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (2016). Research Participant Recruitment: Create Good Materials as Part of a Communications Strategy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4uDN6JZTDI
Daly, D., Hannon, S., & Brady, V. (2019). Motivators and challenges to research recruitment – A qualitative study with midwives. Midwifery, 74, 14–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.midw.2019.03.011
Lysaght, R., Kranenburg, R., Armstrong, C., et al. (2016). Participant Recruitment for Studies on Disability and Work: Challenges and Solutions. Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 26(2), 125–140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10926-015-9594-1
Morse, J. M. (2015). Critical Analysis of Strategies for Determining Rigor in Qualitative Inquiry. Qualitative Health Research, 25(9), 1212-1222. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732315588501
Perez, D., Murphy, G., Wilkes, L., & Peters, K. (2022). One size does not fit all – overcoming barriers to participant recruitment in qualitative research. Nurse researcher, 30(1), 24–30. https://doi.org/10.7748/nr.2022.e1815
Tracy, E. M., Billingsley, J., Pollack, J. M., Barber, D., III, Beorchia, A., Carr, J. C., Gonzalez, G., Harris, M. L., Michaelis, T. L., Morrow, G., Phillips, D., Rutherford, M. W., & Sheats, L. (2021). A behavioral insights approach to recruiting entrepreneurs for an academic study during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 16, e00287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbvi.2021.e00287
