Volunteering / Recruitment for Human Research

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Hello everyone,

 

I hope this topic is appropriate for this forum...

 

I am currently a U of T grad. student in EXS. My project involves cold water swimming survival. Needless to say, it was difficult finding people who might want to participate in this kind of research (but finally, I found 15 brave souls, and am nearly finished my data collection!).

 

These recruitment difficulties gave me the idea that it might be helpful to other researchers to create a "centralized study listings board" (kind of like a job bank) for all of Canada so that members of the public could browse through current research projects and decide whether or not they would like to participate.

 

While it is still in the beginning stages, I would invite anybody who might want to be a "guinea pig" (I use this term in jest) to check out my website. Our URL is: www.researchvolunteers.ca

 

Members of the public are free to use this service, and can directly contact any researchers they like. For human researchers, we offer a subscription service so that you can post your studies on the website. Please note that we want to help the "little guy" from the 4th year undergraduate project student up to established Ph.D. level researchers.

 

We hope to hear from you soon!

 

David Lounsbury, M.Sc. candidate

"Research Volunteers"

E-mail: david@researchvolunteers.ca

Website: http://www.researchvolunteers.ca

Phone (416) 944-1986

FAX: (416) 944-2230

[Guest turtle]

i do think this sounds like a really great idea...but I'm going to qualify that by saying "for some studies". For a small exploratory study a recruitment method like this may be appropriate, and would likely help one's rate of recruitment by "targeting" eager volunteers....however, the epidemiologist in me (or, well epidemiologist-in-training anyway!) would hesitate to use this type of recruitment method for a larger hypothesis-testing project due to the huge possibility of sampling bias...not that sampling bias (volunteer bias etc.) can ever be completely eliminated with other recruitment methods...but people who log on to the website, "browse" through current studies, and sign up for those they prefer will definitely not be representative of the general populaion/specific patient population etc....

 

I'm not trying to knock you down here, i swear! I do think that this type of recruitment has its place...just some things to think about.

 

turtle

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Turtle,

 

You do make some good points.

 

I'm not sure we are on the wavelength re: types of studies though...I'm not thinking clinical per se, but more general...anything at all involving human research: sociology, psychology, physiology, phys.ed./kin, etc...

 

It is true that there would be some bias inherent when recruiting volunteers over the 'net...however...in Canada, the penetrance of Internet-ready computers (per household) is now greater than that of cable TV. It certainly beats posting signs on university campuses, and overharvesting from the 20 - 25 age range (probably also with higher than average SES, IQ, etc). I definitely am not suggesting that this is the only way, or even the best way of recruiting subjects. But for the price (a fraction of the cost of print ads, but with a potential for far greater reach), it would be a valuable adjunct technique.

 

Also...some studies...such as the "extreme" physiology study I mentioned...actually require "eager" individuals, since there is no chance in hell that an "average/regular" person would subject themselves to that level of stress.

 

Scientifically, the best way to do research on humans would be conscript or draft your "volunteers" (i.e. Dachau), but modern day ethics obviously prohibit such practices.

 

Thanks for the feedback!