UPA 2003 -- Idea Market

How do you find participants for your studies?

Facilitator: Kimberly Oslob, Macromedia Inc.

 All of our participants were usability specialist or usability recruiters. The majority of the participants came from software based companies and web based companies, therefore most of their participant pool is with the technical populations, software consumer populations and general web user populations.

Several questions were posed to participants to elicit ideas and participatory conversations. The topic of recruiting was so exciting for participants that they not only answered the below questions but expanded to other much needed topics as related to recruiting. The following, starter questions, were posed to participants:

• Do you have any unusual ways that you obtain a large amount of qualified participants? If so, what are they are approximately how successful are they for you?
• If you post ads to obtain names, which postings return the biggest number of qualified participants?
• Do you use a referral system to obtain names? If so, how do you entice referrals and whom do you obtain these referrals from?
• Do you typically use recruiting agencies? What is the success rate of using them? If not, why do you choose not to use them?
• What incentives do you offer that are successful in attracting qualified participants?

The feedback that was received is categorized below:

Obtaining participants for studies

• Technical Products
• Mailing lists
• Newsgroups
• Obtain a list of registered product users
• General/Consumer or Web
• Use a banner ad on your site
• It is hard to recruit for novice web users on the web
• Senior Centers
• Post at a grocery store
• Generates a limited amount of responses
• Obtain a list of registered product users for consumer software users
• Obtain names of people who register on your site for contests and drawings
• All populations
• Post to craiglist.com or other local online classified listings
• Conferences
• Place a form on your company website
• Post flyers where your target population may look
• Obtain a list of users from the registration cards for products
• Keep a database of names of past participants or people who responded but did not fit your profile
• Email out screener to friends and co-workers for referrals
• Hand the screener to participants to distribute to friends and co-workers
• Obtain names through marketing
• Personal contacts
• Sign up cards

Using agencies for recruiting

• Do not use them
• Agencies tend to be biased
• They are very expensive

• Do use them

• For technical products you need to be very involved in the recruiting process with the agencies
• Cold calling is not fun so have them do it
• They can take care of no shows and reminder calls

What type of incentives to offer

• Pay Cash
• Amex gift certificates
• Software

Handling the possibility of no-shows or cancellations

• Offer extra cash for coming early or on time
• Use floaters- people you pay to wait near a phone for you call to come in last minute. If they are chosen they not only receive the waiting cash (e.g. $40) but they also receive the compensation for coming in.
• Over recruit then send the extra participants home with their gift.

Should the specialist recruit or should there be a dedicated recruiter?

• The overall majority said that there should be a recruiter dedicated because the specialist does not have the time to recruit and it is expensive to have a specialist recruiting.

Screening participants

• Participants tend to exaggerate the truth in order to get into a study. Be careful and detailed with the screening questions to avoid this.

Incentive tax issues

• There is a problem if you hand out software which is worth over $400 dollars or a total in the year of $400. You will have to obtain their Social Security numbers to have them claim for taxes.
• Solution: Label the software as a gift. You are able to receive so much money/item value per year as a gift. Check with your finance dept. on specific rules.

Using internal or external participants for studies

• A majority of the participants use internal participants for dry runs and external for the rest of the studies.

Other

• Don't bring people in more than twice.
• You need a scientific breakdown on profiles if your goal requires it.

In conclusion, the majority of participants used several different methods for recruiting but seemed to struggle with ways in which to obtain participant names. Several conversations focused around how to obtain names and how to entice participants to show up. There seemed to be a strong need for networking and passing along ideas that worked best. Most participants were looking for clear cut answers and all seemed to feel a void when it came to education on recruiting and locating participants.