Step 5: Recruit Participants

Example

Sample screening questionnaires used during VERB's™ formative research (PDF-1.2Mb)

The next step is recruiting participants for your data collection. The method of recruiting participants varies widely depending on your chosen data collection methods.

Just as you need good questions to get good results, you also need to have the right participants. There's no point in spending time and effort creating questions only to ask them of the wrong people. You should have an instrument developed before you start recruiting participants. Recruiting participants too early can rush the timeline; therefore, not allowing you the opportunity to develop the best possible instrument.

Screening
You should have a set of characteristics that define your participants. Use these criteria to set up a screening tool. When someone responds to your inquiries about participating, this screening tool will allow you to see if they match your criteria. If you are doing separate focus groups with people who have different characteristics the screening tool can determine which group the respondent is most appropriate for, if any.