Reaching and recruiting people
Who you ask, how you ask, and who gets missed
Community networks, gatekeepers, trust, inclusive invitation, and the barriers that keep people out.
Recruitment is where the role earns its place, and where it does the most damage when it is done casually. The task is not to fill a room. It is to reach the people the study was designed for, and to let them decide.
Start with who is missing
Before you invite anyone, write down four lists.
The four lists
- Who the study needs. The eligibility criteria, in plain words.
- Who is easy to reach. The people you see every week.
- Who is hard to reach. The people inside the eligible group who will not come to a university room, will not answer a number they do not know, or cannot read the invitation.
- Who is missing from both. The people who are not in your network and not in the study's.
Recruitment plans that use only list two produce a sample of the well connected. The gap between list two and list three is the work.
The channels that worked
Across the IBISES studies, link workers recruited through existing community networks, community organisation membership, faith connections, and word of mouth inside established relationships. Social media and posters were secondary. Relationship was primary.
Channel notes
- Faith settings. High reach, high trust, and a need to work with the leader's permission and timing.
- Community organisations. The strongest route, and the one that needs a formal relationship. Speak to the organisation before you speak to its members.
- Word of mouth. Effective, and easy to distort. Track who invited whom, so you can see whether the sample drifted.
- Community events and gatherings. Good for awareness, weak for consent to a specific study.
- Clinical settings. Usually the team's route, with permission. A link worker cannot recruit in a GP surgery without arrangement.
Gatekeepers
A gatekeeper is a person who controls access to a group: a faith leader, a centre manager, a carer, a family elder. Gatekeepers protect. They have usually seen research arrive, take, and leave.
- Ask the gatekeeper what the community needs from the study, not only what the study needs from the community.
- Accept a no. A refused gatekeeper is information about trust, not an obstacle to route around.
- Do not ask one gatekeeper to vouch for twenty people. That puts them in a difficult position.
- Record the gatekeeper's conditions and keep them.
The invitation conversation
Most recruitment happens in a two-minute conversation. Train it until it is natural.
Five steps, in order
- Say who you are and where you are from. Include the community organisation, if it applies. "I am a link worker on a study run by the university with [organisation]."
- Say what the study is for, in one sentence. No jargon. "We want to understand what makes it hard for people to get help for [topic]."
- Say what taking part involves. Time, place, format, payment, and what happens to what they say.
- Say why you are asking this person. "We are asking people who have used the service in the last two years."
- Offer the next step, and make it easy. A call, a visit, a written sheet, a time to think. Then stop talking.
Barriers that keep people out
Eight, with the fix
- Time. Hold sessions in the evening, at weekends, or when the community already gathers.
- Place. Use community venues, not university rooms. Provide a reason to travel, and pay the travel.
- Language. Offer interpretation, and translate written materials. Do not rely on a family member to interpret unless the person asks for it and the study approves.
- Literacy. Read the information aloud. Use short sentences and pictures. Never ask a person to sign a form they cannot read.
- Technology. Offer a phone call, a paper form, or help with the device. Do not make an app the only route.
- Cost. Pay travel, childcare and data. State the payment before the person asks.
- Distrust. Name the history where it is relevant. Explain what protects people now.
- Stigma. Do not ask a person to be seen entering a building that identifies them. Meet somewhere neutral.
Inviting without pressuring
You are a member of the community. That gives your invitation weight, and that weight is the risk. A person may say yes because they know you, not because they want to take part.
- Say clearly that no is fine, and that a no does not affect any care or service.
- Do not ask twice, unless the person asks you to come back.
- Give a way to decline without speaking to you: a number, a form, a message.
- Watch for the polite yes. Offer time to think before you take a decision.
Recording recruitment
Keep a simple log. Date, channel, number invited, number interested, number consented, number attended. It shows the team where the plan worked, and it protects you when the sample is questioned.
The test of understanding
The study needs 20 South Asian women aged 40 to 60. Your first ten recruits are all women who attend the same community centre, and all are known to you. What is the problem, and what do you do?
The sample is drifting to the well connected and the already engaged. Report it. Add channels: a different centre, a different language group, a faith setting, a pharmacy, a WhatsApp group you do not run. Ask the team whether the eligibility criteria or the approach is excluding the people they most need. Keep the log so the drift is visible and correctable.