How to recruit participants? Qual project

[kualitate]

Has anyone got any tips on how to recruit participants for a qualitative project involving interviews?

I have tried various social media platforms (and had lots of scammers sign up), have tried putting up posters and word of mouth but I am struggling!!! I used to rely on Twitter back in the days when everyone used it but it now feels like an awful space since it became X, and I have to admit I haven't tried there as I'm not sure if there is any point...

Any advice/tips on what works/avenues to try?

Do you have a budget? Could a site like prolific or respondent be worth a try?

I do, but I am only looking for around 10 participants - would it be worth it for such a small number?

Do you have university or NHS ethics to be recruiting? You will need them, and if you do, it will say in your proposal where you were planning to recruit from. You cannot conduct research without ethical approval

Institutional ethical approval all sorted, applied for and confirmed :) I listed social media and word of mouth/gatekeepers for recruitment. I've been recruiting for years but have never struggled like this with participants - there's so much noise online, social media posts just aren't as effective as they were

What's the screening criteria? Can you put up posters at uni campuses and do gumtree ads? I used to do this professionally but usually with a sizeable budget. Give an incentive if you can.

I'll do the survey. If there's a financial incentive!

My DD did a research project last summer. They must have emailed out a few thousand surveys, and from responses picked a few possible interview candidates - they ended up with 7 which was what they were aiming for. However, even though this was a peer to peer survey (other academics), the response rate to the questionnaire was very low. A few academics were kind enough to forward the survey to their contacts. I guess people get a number of these requests so can’t engage with them all. You are asking for them to actively sign up - I’d send targeted emails (of course you need the email addresses, which in my DD’s case was through their universities) of a survey to answer and then approach a few to interview from the responses.

Prolific can take small numbers. What is the criteria? Could any of us help?

I've used Prolific for this type of recruitment, I did a screening questionnaire first, and then invited participants to an interview. It worked well

If you have funding to recruit, try Prolific, or a social media advertising company.

Are you able to indicate the broad area of research? In my field, a lot of academics and think tanks have moved onto BlueSky, which looks identical to twitter in all but name, so is quite easy to use. But I mostly do expert interviews and so have a network to draw on.

Are there any intermediary organisations you could go via?

I did qual research and needed 25 participants. I found a few from adverts in places of worship and a letter in the Guardian newspaper. I got the rest through snowballing - recommended by other participants.

I’ve been recruiting research participants via LinkedIn. I joined a number of relevant groups there.

Prolific takes a bit of work to set up but once you have it organised it is v efficient

Another useful paper
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0279720

I would be interested to hear what the costs involved for Prolific are if anyone has any insight? We have a big recruitment drive to a survey coming up and need to move more online.

Prolific is not cheap but all the costs are clearly detailed on the website. I think it is roughly min wag to the ppt and 30% platform fee to Prolific.

I used snowballing and that was very effective.

LinkedIn was my first idea when I read the subject line.

Agree with others about using an incentive, although there’s research out there that indicates it’s not always helpful.