Posts tagged “screening”

Reading Ahead: Managing recruiting

Reading ahead logo with space above

There’s always something new in every project. Often we encounter a bit of process that we may not know how to best manage it. So we’ll make our best plan and see what happens. We learn as we go and ultimately have a better way for dealing with it next time.

In a regular client project, we write a screener and work with a recruiting company who finds potential research participants, screens them, and schedules them. Every day they email us an updated spreadsheet (or as they call it “grid”) with responses to screener questions, scheduled times, locations, and contact info. It still ends up requiring a significant amount of project management effort on our end, because questions will arise, schedules will shift, people will cancel, client travel must be arranged, etc. etc.

For Reading Ahead, we did all of the recruiting ourselves. Although we’ve done this before, this may be the first time since the rise of social media: we put the word out on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, email to friends, and here on All This ChittahChattah.

While Dan lead the effort, we both used our own networks, and so we got responses in a number of channels, sent to either or both of us, including:

  • @ replies on Twitter
  • direct messages on Twitter
  • Comments on Facebook posts
  • Messages on Facebook
  • Emails (directly to either of us, or forwarded from friends, and friends-of-friends

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A private dialog on Facebook

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Comments on a Facebook status update. Note that Dan is able to jump in and make contact directly

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Direct Messages in Twitter

Some people were potential participants, some were referrers to other potential participants, and some were both. And given the range of platforms we were using, with their associated restrictions (and unclear social protocols), we had to scramble to figure out who could and should communicate with who to follow up and get to the point where we could see if the people in question were right for the study. We didn’t expect this to happen, and eventually Dan’s inbox and/or his Word document were no longer efficient, and as some participants were scheduled or in negotiation to be scheduled, he ended up with this schedule cum worksheet:

schedule

Being split across the two of us and these different media, eventually we were interacting with people for whom we had to check our notes to trace back how we had connected to them, which was great for our sample, since it meant we weren’t seeing a group of people we already knew.

It was further complicated when we had finished our fieldwork and wanted to go back to everyone who offered help close the loop with them, thanking them for help. Technically, and protocol-wise, it took some work (who are the people we need to follow up with? Who follows up with them? What media do they use), basically going through each instance one-by one.

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We haven’t figured out what we’ll do next time; we won’t forget the challenges we’ve had but there’s just not time or need right now to plan for the future. If I had to guess, I’d imagine a Google Spreadsheet that includes where we got people from, who owns the contact, whether they are participant-candidate or referrer, etc.). Despite being very pessimistic about the demands of recruiting, we still underestimated the time and complexity required for this project.

Research screening

I was bemused to see that Feast of Love opened last weekend. Our last time at the movies was when The Simpsons Movie opened, and I participated in some intercept-market research at the theater.

Part of the lobby had been given over to these groovy looking kiosks, with a couple of guys in attendance, asking people who passed by if they would like to give their opinion about an upcoming movie. My age and gender qualified me to participate (woo hoo) and I went with one dude over to a kiosk. I was shown a couple of clips and responded to various questions, but the weirdness of it was that the test was designed have some screens operated by me, and some screens visible only to the interviewer. But they didn’t do it that way. So for various pieces where I was to click within multiple choices, the interviewer, who knew the testing software rather well, just whipped through the keypresses, bam->redraw, bam->redraw, quickly asking me the minimum to move to the next one. Okay, so he took care of it for me. But then this screen we were both looking at would display testing instructions such as ASK PARTICIPANT FOR OPINION OF BENEFIT OF DATE MOVIES. PROBE ON RELATIONSHIP, TIMING, COST. And of course, he wouldn’t even come close, he’d get the one line answer from me, and then he’d type in the quickest condensation of my answer: stay home.

After a minute or so, it became more about the two of us cooperating to use the software to get through test. I realized that my opinion didn’t matter; it’s hard to feel represented in a forced-choice discussion, and it’s unlikely one would continue to provide color when all that gets captured is minimal facts. Further, by exposing the instructions to me, his shortcuts became clear, and I ended up slightly co-opted into the testing process, giving up any sense of really delivering the full truth to this interviewer.

When we see “market research” number published to support some business decision, let’s keep in mind how poorly that data may have been collected (from the concept of how to collect that data, to the implementation of a data collection environment, to the staffing and execution of the data gathering). How reliable could any of this possibly be?

Hong Kong Airport: Screening for heat

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Screening for heat, Hong Kong airport, January 2006

Seeming rather like a science-fiction movie (but hey, it’s Asia, right?), arriving passengers at the Hong Airport had to walk through an area where they were monitored for heat – presumably to see if you were feverish and thus the carrier of a SARS-like pandemic (or H5N1)? There wasn’t a lot of info and it was hard to realize you had been heat-scanned until after you passed by. Someone would sit in front of a monitor and watch the image. I didn’t see anyone go through who was red-hot so I don’t know what the consequences were or really anything about how it worked.

Body screening ad

seen in the local paper
CTSI Spring Special!
50% OFF BODY SCAN
for a Loved One or Friend with Your Body Scan *
A body Scan (neck to pelvis) at CTSI can detect health problems at very early stages when cure rates are higest. The procedure is fast, non-invasive and affordable.

[blah blah]
www.ctscreening.com

Of course, the best part of the ad is the smiling woman and competent-looking man on the PC who are helping a blanket-swaddled elderly person slide into a gigantic plastic donut. Yikes!

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