How Do I Find Participants With a Recruiting Screener?
By: Laura Reinert
One of the most important aspects of human factors research
is making sure you have the right people in the room interacting with your
product.
How do we find a representative sample?
Participants
in your human factors study should represent the intended users of your product
so they behave similarly to what you would expect to see in real life. Modern
recruitment methods allow for communication with a large variety of people, but
how do we know who to include in the study? We use a recruiting screener.
What is a recruiting screener?
The recruiting
screener is a list of questions to ask potential participants to determine if
they are representative users of your product. By asking specific questions,
you can decide who accurately represents the intended users of your product and
exclude people who do not. The screener also creates a record of how qualified
people were found, what worked and what did not, and other important
information, all of which could be useful to know for future studies.
Who should you include?
It is important that a recruiting screener includes questions that encompass the most important attributes of your users, particularly those attributes that have the potential to impact use of the product. However, the pool of potential participants gets smaller with each question you ask, so you need to be strategic. Some participant attributes you might want to screen for could include:
- General demographics (e.g., age, gender, sex, handedness)
- Background (e.g., education, training/professional specialty)
- Profession (e.g., job title, certifications)
- Prior experience with the product or similar products
What happens after making the screener?
After you
start reaching out to potential participants and using the screener, you need
to ensure the screener is doing its job. Sometimes, unanticipated events occur.
For example, a question could accidentally screen out qualified participants. Therefore,
it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of the screener throughout the
entire recruiting process.
The screener is connected to the study schedule. As a
potential participant is identified, you then need to understand if they are
available the day(s) the study is being conducted. Another aspect to watch is
if a specific healthcare professional user group is all unavailable could it be
that they schedule procedures on the same day? Unfortunately, these things might
not be something you know until you start the process.
Another aspect of recruiting to consider is that the lay
user respondents may not be clinical experts. Therefore, you need to be intentional
in the questions you ask and specific about what you want to know. For example,
a lay person may not know the difference between an autoinjector versus a multi-dose
pre-filled pen. In this circumstance, you may need to ask for additional
medication details, pictures, or more information to confirm what the
participant is saying.
I need help!
Recruiting can be difficult, but you do
not have to do it alone. Core Human Factors, A Rimkus Company, is comprised of
a team of qualified experts with a long history of researching intended users
and creating screeners for human factors formatives, validations, comparative
use studies, and more. Core Human Factors also has an in-house recruiting team
that understands the nuances of recruiting for usability research. This is
especially useful for those rare, hard-to-find participant groups and special
cases. The Core Participant Network team will work with you to ensure recruitment
goes smoothly and that you will be informed before, during, and after the
process is complete.
Try it!
It can be daunting, but the best way to
figure out if you have a good recruiting screener is to start using it. Use
your recruiting screener during a human factors formative study, or a pilot
study when the stakes are lower, and make improvements and changes so that it
is ready to be used in your human factors validation study, when you want no
surprises.