Tag Archives: recruiting

Excerpt from Quirk’s Article: Recruiting

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From an article I just published in Quirk’s on recruiting by the researchers:

http://www.quirks.com/articles/2011/20110926-1.aspx

The gist is fundamentally simple — recruiting isn’t something you hand off, it’s part of the process.

Define the contexts 

Where does an activity or practice take place? Defining the contexts we want to examine helps articulate the range of possibilities for observation. We frequently recruit based on demographics and occasionally psychographics that are derived from segmentation studies provided by the client. There is nothing wrong with segmentation studies or using them as a basis for grounding your participant base but it is important to recognize that individuals do not work as solo performers. Their actions, beliefs, practices, etc., are all shaped by the settings and situations in which they interact with others.

Theoretical sampling often seeks maximum variation rather than a representative slice of reality. In other words, anthropologists are interested in the systematic study of the contexts surrounding a particular consumer product or business practice. If researchers find meaning in the contexts that surround what people do, then why would the individual person be the unit of measurement around which to build a sampling design?

Ethnography takes place within a natural setting where relevant events and behaviors are occurring. Regardless of the methodology being used, this basic precept of the ethnographer holds true. That means the sample is more than a fixed set of people, it is defined by a range of activities. For example, if you are interested in studying how people use beer, it makes sense to think about all the settings in which beer is consumed, purchased and used – parks, picnics, bars, restaurants, parking lots and a host of other locations. If you understand the possible ranges of context, you can recruit against a wider range of possible interactions and gather richer insights.

Define the sample

Who are the people we want to talk with? What are the social and cultural circles that will shape the event? It isn’t enough to define a demographic sample, you need to think in terms of cultural, social, professional and environmental systems. We tend to reduce people to their parts rather than thinking about them in a broader context. Endless attitudinal statements, with scales for “agree” and “disagree,” are constructed and by the very nature of the question structure have severe limits. Most conventional research consists of predetermined questions and parameters that force research subjects into narrow channels of response. And these are often as much a bias of the researcher as a reflection of the consumer’s worldview. The very nature of posing a direct question immediately primes the respondent to seek the “right” answer. Recruiters, tasked with providing bodies for a study, understandably fill the quotas derived from segmentation schemes that may have extremely limited practical validity.

Why does this matter? Because people take on different roles throughout the day and under different conditions. Furthermore, who we are is shaped by our interactions with others. In contrast, ethnographic research routinely reveals that customers are more alike than different at the source of their behavior. And where the differences lie, they are far more profound and surprising than the answers segmentation will reveal. It uncovers how the entire human experience translates into the act of being a customer for a particular brand, product or service. It moves beyond attributes. It provides a clear view of cultural and behavioral categories based on the social, cultural and psychological needs and barriers driving customer feelings and thoughts. And because it looks through the lens of a holistic system structure, it yields a more realistic understanding of the customer than traditional methods. It produces insights and understandings that can be more predictive of the possibilities of the future than demographic, attitudinal or psychographic data. That means better recruiting and better research.

Get dirty 

Be willing and able to recognize potential participants while you are actually doing the work. Take advantage of the setting and use it to recruit. We often overlook the situations we find ourselves in, missing opportunities to gather a wider range of experiences and perspectives. The plane, the party, the person in the shoe store – they are all opportunities to strike up a conversation and find participants.

But why do it? There are a several reasons. First, context shapes behavior and conversation. The nature of the interaction we initiate in one setting will produce a different kind of interaction than we may experience in another venue. That means that once the participant is recruited and the setting changes, we may uncover potential differences between what they say or do in one context to another. Contradictions are where some of the most powerful insights usually occur. Which leads to the second point: Recruiting in the field begins the data collection process and helps to develop a theory behind what you’re seeing earlier in the research. It is an opportunity to start formulating questions and ideas based on firsthand interaction rather than waiting until you meet a participant for the first time.

Third, recruiting in the field often leads to a greater rapport. Rather than being a stranger who shows up at your doorstep one afternoon, the participant already has a sense of relationship, provided you’ve taken the time to strike up a solid conversation. Participants recruited in this way have a different set of expectations and take on a role that breaks free of the researcher/participant paradigm because this sort of recruitment changes the power dynamic, moving the nature of the interaction from a transaction to one of genuine sharing.

Why Recruit In The Field?

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We often turn to recruiters go find our participants.  A screener is built, a company hired and two weeks later we show up on someone’s doorstep with camera in hand. Of course this is a practical reality of timeframes and budgets, but it means losing opportunities to expand and improve the research we do.  Recruiting in the field is and should always be an element of how we execute our work.  Be willing and able to recognize potential participants while you are actually doing the work. Take advantage of the setting and use it to recruit. We often overlook the situations we find ourselves in, missing opportunities to gather a wider range of experiences and perspectives. The plane, the party, the person in the shoe store, they are all opportunities to strike up a conversation and find participants. But why do it? There are a several reasons.

First, context shapes behavior and conversation. The nature of the interaction we initiate in one setting will produce a different kind of interaction than we may experience in another venue. That means that once the participant is recruited and the setting changes, we may uncover potential differences between what they say or do in one context to another. Contradictions are where some of the most powerful insights usually occur. Which leads to the second point.

Recruiting in the field it begins the data collection process and helps to develop and theory behind what you’re seeing earlier in the research. It is an opportunity to start formulating questions and ideas based on first-hand interaction rather than waiting until you meet a participant for the first time. Who are the people we want to talk with? What are the social and cultural circles that will shape the event.  It isn’t enough to define a demographic sample, you need to think in terms of cultural, social, professional and environmental systems.  We tend to reduce people to their parts rather than thinking about them in a broader context.

Third, recruiting in the field often leads to a greater rapport. Rather than being a stranger who shows up at your doorstep one afternoon, the participant already has a sense of relationship, provided you’ve taken the time to strike up a solid conversation. Participants recruited in this way have a different set of expectations and take on a role that breaks free of the researcher/participant paradigm because this sort of recruitment changes the power dynamic, moving the nature of the interaction from a transaction to one of genuine sharing.

Recruiting IS Research: 3 Key Tips When Beginning a Project

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For the most part, most people who do design and market research do not see recruiting  as part of the research process, but as something that happens outside  of and apart from the field-research. Once in a long while, we have a  client with such a short time-frame or such a specific participant 
need that recruiters are necessary. But we try to convince clients to 
give us the time to use our own staff recruit on the ground or at the very least, through conversations over the phone.  Even when using an outside recruiter, simply taking what you get is sloppy work. Research begins during recruitment, not after you are in the field.

We have found that most 
recruiting agencies draw from a pool of people who have signed up to participate in focus groups and who have already  been “trained” to be participants in that way. Increasingly, this is becoming the case for ethnographic participants, as well. While a good interviewer/participant observer can no doubt get around some of the problems of telling them what they want to hear, not having access to the  data generated during the process of finding people to talk to (or  letting them find you) is a severe limitation. It is important to remember that recruiters do not see data collection as their role. For a skilled ethnographer, for whom everything is data, this means that they lose potentially important information.

To be fair, using a recruiter is not always a bad idea. Indeed, there are some very good recruiters out there who we trust implicitly.  They can add to the insights that come from recruiting, but they are few and far between. These recruiters see themselves as partners with the ethnographer rather than simply playing a transactional role.

Experience tells us that when we’ve used recruiters and our own on-the-ground recruits, the people we pick out are usually the more helpful respondents. Methodologically, the process tells us that we are able to establish trust and rapport during recruitment rather than relying on an awkward first encounter that was scheduled months in advance.

So, from the standpoint of doing what is best for the client, it begs a simple question: shouldn’t recruiting be a part of the process of the project and understanding the local context? The process of meeting and talking to people provides insight into cultural norms. Finding out whether or when they might talk with a researcher, let alone allowing the researcher into their lives on a more expansive basis, is an incredibly important sources of information.  This isn’t always an easy task, so it is important to remember the following tips:

  • Define the contexts: Where does an activity or practice take place? Defining the contexts we want to examine helps articulate the range of possibilities for observation.
  • Define the sample: Who are the people we want to talk with? What are the social and cultural circles that will shape the event.  It isn’t enough to define a demographic sample, you need to think in terms of cultural, social, professional and environmental systems.
  • Get dirty: Be willing and able to recognize potential participants while you are actually doing the work.  Take advantage of the setting and use it to recruit.

Recruiting teaches us about daily life, worldview, and what matters most to our participants. It can tell us volumes about how people conceptualize private and public spaces in which 
strangers are welcome to visit.  Recruiting helps establish a sense of shared experience that leads to a richer understanding, which in turn leads to greater innovation.  Ethnography is grounded in the idea of becoming more than a stranger. Without being engaged first hand in the recruitment process, the researcher is losing an profoundly important opportunity.

 

By Gavin