recruit-research-participants

name	recruit-research-participants
category	school
description	Recruit research participants through an approved, fair, privacy-preserving process with transparent burden, compensation, and consent boundaries. Use when enrolling people into an ethics-approved study.

recruit-research-participants

Invite participation without pressure, deception, or unnecessary disclosure.

When to use

• Use only after the recruitment route and materials have the required approval.
• Do not recruit through authority relationships, private records, or targeted vulnerability unless explicitly approved and safeguarded.

Procedure

1. Confirm current protocol, eligibility, sample targets, recruitment window, sites, and approved channels.
2. Identify who may contact candidates and separate supervisors, teachers, clinicians, and service providers where refusal could feel unsafe.
3. Use only approved messages that state purpose, procedures, burden, risks, compensation, voluntariness, and contact details accurately.
4. Minimize screening questions and collect responses through authorized secure systems.
5. Apply inclusion and exclusion rules consistently without inferring protected traits or convenient exceptions.
6. Provide accessible formats, languages, scheduling, and reasonable participation support.
7. Keep compensation proportionate and separate from any penalty for declining or withdrawing.
8. Record contact attempts, screening disposition, consent status, and recruitment source without unnecessary private detail.
9. Monitor representation, response, complaints, pressure signals, and channel performance.
10. Pause and seek an amendment before changing material, population, incentives, or route.

Worked example

A study plans to recruit students through their course instructor. To reduce pressure, an independent coordinator sends the approved invitation, the instructor cannot see who responds, and participation has an equivalent nonresearch alternative. The recruitment log verifies the separation.

Done

• A verified recruitment plan records approved channels, roles, materials, eligibility, accessibility, compensation, privacy, and pause rules
• A recruitment log verifies consistent screening, voluntary contact, consent boundaries, complaints, and sample progress