Recruiting Participants

Here’s a skeleton-guide to emailing and scheduling participants for studies! There are email scripts that might be relevant, as well as some checklists for making sure everything is updated as needed.

All participant emails should be sent out from the lab email (ccm.lab@ubc.ca). Instructions on how to access the email are here.

There are email scripts in the drafts of the lab email, but you can also find them linked below. Feel free to play around with formatting and wording as you see fit.

Here is a powerpoint slide you can use when recruiting students from classes.

Step 1: Initial Contact¶

• Reaching out from potential participants list

• Replying to emails from interested participants

Checklist¶

• Ensure participant is eligible.

• Ensure participant has not been contacted (by us or PMD Lab) very recently (unless they express interest in doing more studies).

• Update corresponding column in Potential Participants to “contacted”.

Step 2: Coordinating with Participants¶

Every recruitment process will be different, and this will largely be some standard customer service stuff. Ultimately we want participants to possibly come back for future studies, so be polite, thank them for their interest, apologize if we’re replying late, etc.

Scripts for some basic possible emails are linked below.

• Participant declines

• Participant chooses an unavailable time

• Participant is only available after work hours

Checklist¶

• If declined, update corresponding column in Potential Participants to “declined”.

Step 3: Confirming a Visit¶

Yay!!

• Confirming a study

Checklist¶

• Update corresponding column in Potential Participants to “booked”.

• Add the email to the “Scheduled” folder.

• Text or email the researcher running the study before confirming to make sure they’ll be available.

• Add Google Calendar events for session(s). The Google Calendar event should include the following:

  • Title: “Participant (first name)”

  • Description: Participant’s email

  • If applicable, include who will be running the study.

Step 4: Reminders¶

To prevent booked participants from not showing up, reminder emails should be sent the workday before participants’ sessions (i.e. day prior, or Friday before the following Monday).

• Reminders script

Checklist¶

• If there has been contact (including if participant has been in the lab for a session) <= 2 days before session, then no need to contact for reminder.

Cancellations, Reschedules, No-Shows, etc.¶

• Participant asks to reschedule

• Participant asks to cancel

• Participant is more than 15 minutes late

Checklist¶

• Update Google Calendar as needed.

  • If cancelling/rescheduling, make sure Google Calendar reflects this so lab members know!

• Update Potential Participants as needed.