Help with Participant Recruitment Ideas

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

shamrock14

Full Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2008
Messages
20
Reaction score
5
Hi everyone! I'm trying to recruit participants for a research study in my lab. We have an IRB approved ad to post online and a flyer to post on campus/in the community. Were are hitting a dry spell with participant recruitment... do any of you have ideas on where to post ads/flyers to recruit participants (i.e., maybe locations you have had success posting in the past)? Thanks!!

Members don't see this ad.
 
Who do you want to recruit?
I'm trying to recruit individuals 18 years or older who have a history of depression, but who are currently doing okay (i.e., relatively asymptomatic).
 
Members don't see this ad :)
I've had some good luck at different science and health fairs. You can set up a booth about your work and have flyers ready. Mailings, pamphlets etc usually don't work that well unless you have a specific mailing list with people who have expressed interest.

Well placed flyers in public places that have the little "tear off" phone numbers can be good. Depending on your financial situation, a small add in a local paper sometimes works as well. Also, as much as many of us would like to think that people participate strictly for their contribution to science, the truth is compensation talks. I tend to get more responses when I state ho much the study compensates in the flyer.
 
Flyers: Craigslist, Community Mental Health Centers, hair salons...Also, if you're paying the participants: plasma centers, labor centers, Social Security/ Disability office...
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Reddit. One of my RAs suggested this, and it blew my mind. I only kind've really knew what it is. Color me clueless. But, ohmigod, there are so many people on it.

For example:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Participants/

Or a subreddit relevant to your research focus.
 
Last edited:
How about reaching out to sexual minorities? I am also having a hard time collecting data for my dissertation study.
 
How about reaching out to sexual minorities? I am also having a hard time collecting data for my dissertation study.

Subreddits are actually perfect for this. Just google reddit name of whatever sexual minority. Also, Facebook and Yahoo groups.
 
Pure speculation: places where asymptomatic people wouldn’t mind being reminded they were depressed. (E.g. some of them might go to the gym to manage symptoms, but may not want to be reminded of the past in an environment linked with aspirational goals.) Maybe in pharmacies or the campus medical office, which they might associate with taking positive action for themselves towards self-care, and so feel a little more generous. Or department bulletin boards, or the university library, which might lead people to feel they’re contributing to a fellow peer’s work.

I see the tear-off papers mostly torn off when they’re hung in bathroom stalls on campus. (at sitting-down eye level <- experience limited to women's loos)
 
Amazon's mechanical turk service. You can link a qualtrics survey through it and pay people a small amount to take some survey data. Good way to collect data of certain kinds.

Have you had good experience with this? I used it a few years ago and got complete garbage. My social psych friends have been raving about it lately though. Maybe they fixed whatever was wrong with it (or I set it up wrong, but I followed their directions for getting good data...).
 
Have you had good experience with this? I used it a few years ago and got complete garbage. My social psych friends have been raving about it lately though. Maybe they fixed whatever was wrong with it (or I set it up wrong, but I followed their directions for getting good data...).
To be honest, I have not used it. I have some colleagues who like it for simple things. You have to include multiple validity checks throughout the data to get anything worthwhile. So, still a lot of garbage to sift through. I would probably only use it to get some preliminary data as a proof of concept from which to build something else.
 
Have you had good experience with this? I used it a few years ago and got complete garbage. My social psych friends have been raving about it lately though. Maybe they fixed whatever was wrong with it (or I set it up wrong, but I followed their directions for getting good data...).
There's actually published data indicating that it produces valid/reliable data and I've had good experiences with it personally (good alphas, sensible qualitative responses, etc). I do limit it to US workers only, though. Tbh, there's no more reason for Mturk workers to make up responses, then there is for undergrads, redditors, etc. to do so.


Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S. D. (2011). Amazon's Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality data?. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 3-5.
 
Top