| People Are Saying... |
"Our experience was great. We received more than enough participants for our surveys and each of them gave us valuable input on improving our site. I'd like to say thanks to all the participants and especially to the ResearchChicago team."
- Murdoch Fraser, Dizpersion Technologies Inc
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Participant Recruiting
ResearchChicago recruits participants through several channels, with the most frequently used being Internet-based advertising, paper flyering and classified advertising. ResearchChicago will also find and directly contact special interest groups depending on the currently listed studies. Other methods currently used or planned for future use include public transit/billboard advertisements, radio advertisements and television advertisements. ResearchChicago strives to always actively recruit new participants.
ResearchChicago uses both general and specific recruitment messages when recruiting participants. General messages, such as “Participants Needed for Research Studies”, do not mention specific studies or compensation. These types of messages are used occasionally and are targeted primarily to build brand recognition and familiarity. Specific messages are used more frequently as they stand out more, use key words and are more descriptive, such as “Earn $50 for Participating in Relationship Study”.
We acknowledge that emphasizing rewards can be a sensitive issue for researchers. We understand that researchers are hesitant to use participants that have been recruited with the promise of money or other rewards. ResearchChicago is upfront with participants that not all studies and experiments have compensation, but non-compensated studies still have reasonable response rates.
Further, while researchers may be concerned about recruiting emphasizing rewards, we have found that positive reinforcement (“Do a research study and you will receive this reward”) often produces better and more reliable results than negative reinforcement (“Do a research study or else you will fail this class”). As incentive is a necessary part of research, we will use monetary and other incentives for recruiting purposes.
The primary method for signing up is via the Internet. While we will accept information over the phone, we strongly encourage participants to sign up via our online form, granting automatic and immediate access to studies and storing all of their information in our demographic database. After filling out the short sign-up form, participants can log in and fill out an extended demographic profile, including personal features, personal interests, family members, possessions, and other information.
We acknowledge that some researchers are concerned about using the Internet and email as the primary means of communication with participants. Because of this, we require participants to provide a phone number when signing up. Researchers are also able to specify on a per-study basis whether or not they require a phone number. In addition to providing a secondary method of contact (in most cases we still attempt to use email as a primary means of communication), requiring a phone number will usually result in a higher response rate.
Though we have put a significant amount of thought and effort into the formation and details of our policies and practices, we know that research itself is constantly evolving and we welcome the opportunity to discuss questions, concerns, ideas and suggestions with our current and potential clients.
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