Participant recruitment

Current efforts & past results

The Recruitment Working Group is actively exploring and testing out recruitment approaches!

See this Google doc for recent observations about approaches and success.

Here are some general observations:

• Substantial carryover effects to other studies (in different age range) when one group advertises a study! We’re getting benefits of cooperation, and really not seeing “competition” between CHS studies at this point.

• Paying participants makes a huge difference in ability to recruit, as well as diversity of participants. Separately, we believe it’s ethical to pay families for their time & contribution. We currently aim for ~$15/hour for the expected duration of the study. Currently done by researchers manually sending gift cards post-study; eventual plans to provide centralized compensation functionality.

Existing avenues for online outreach

• Facebook page

  • Posting to AcademicMamas w/ babies born 2017 page (and tagging specific moms with kids in age range) has had the most success (but still very small-scale - a total of maybe 10 kids)

  • Occasional attempts at ‘boosting’ posts advertising studies (most recently, ~6000 views from new parents) has never yielded participants for unpaid studies

  • Interested labs may advertise via the CHS page - we send an invite to be an editor, you may need to double check at https://www.facebook.com/pages/?category=invites to find it. There are known problems about the invites being hard to find: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?id=1249301125083191

  • Experimenting with interest targeting and recording results would be a helpful contribution!

Potential approaches

• Ask participants to tell their friends

  • Include in study debriefing

  • Provide video for download/sharing

  • Email after study

  • Provide printable flyers on website

• Option to become a parent ambassador/advisor, or just be more available to parents

  • Advance testing of new studies

  • Providing more detailed feedback on studies & parent-facing text

  • Occasional joint meetings, or involvement in other CHS meetings

  • Share with parent groups online

  • “Office hours” - easy to join group video chat

  • Schedule participants (even though it’s unnecessary) to provide “accountability” when people intend to participate

• Cultivate a more active social media presence

  • Regularly posted content - e.g.

    • Info about cognitive development or recent studies, interesting articles

    • Cute videos of participants

    • Status updates

    • Intros to lab members

    • Q&A about cognitive development

    • Encourage sharing cute pictures/videos on particular topics

    • “Ask your kid” feature - get funny answers to questions

  • Read about how to do this and/or get help from people who know what they’re doing

• In-person local advertising (see Rianna’s Cambridge/Boston map). Put up flyers and/or talk to local institutions/people that work with kids to get them excited about CHS, ask them to mention it to families, maintain relationships. Examples of places we’ve looked when advertising locally in Cambridge:

  • Look at lists like Boston Coop, Mommy Poppins drop-in indoor playspaces, City Moms Blog to gather more ideas

  • Activities: Cambridge Public Library lapsit, other activities like Music Together

  • Parent groups: look for new parent support groups, new parent education, baby playgroups.

  • Toy stores; Baby stuff secondhand shops, e.g. Two Little Monkeys

  • Pediatricians’ offices

  • Parks

  • Daycares, preschools, elementary schools, afterschool programs

  • MIT museum (not because they get a ton of kids but because we already have a connection via MIT, and in the future maybe they’d like to host an interactive CHS display…)

  • Cambridge Family Resource Center

  • Baby U, Center for Families playgroups, other parent ed

• Go to events with kids and talk with families directly

  • Cambridge Science Festival

  • Keep an eye out on various calendars for events (e.g., Cambridge DHSP)

  • Boston Children’s Museum

• Possible features to support recruitment

  • Point system

  • Let parents comment on studies publicly?

• Media/online outreach

  • Talk to groups that do online research with adults (e.g. LabInTheWild, TestMyBrain) to see if they’d be up for linking to CHS

  • Talk to groups that do online research with kids - e.g. https://www.babysleepstudy.org/studysignup,

  • Ask institutions that might be interested about featuring/linking to CHS, or publishing content we provide - examples:

    • Boston Children’s Museum

    • https://www.parentingscience.com/online-parenting-studies.html

    • http://www.scholastic.com/parents/blogs

    • https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/mind_brain/child_psychology/

    • https://theconversation.com/us (write an article?)

    • http://www.parenting.com/

    • https://www.babycenter.com/

    • https://mommypoppins.com/kids/drop-in-indoor-play-spaces-for-boston-babies-toddlers-and-preschoolers (can request listing)

    • https://boston.citymomsblog.com/guide/8-rainy-day-infant-toddler-friendly-activities-in-boston/ (guest post submission)

  • Work w/ parenting-focused bloggers (esp. who don’t focus exclusively on paid review type posts)

  • Ask for help from MIT media folks

  • Posting in parent groups - BabyCenter, Facebook birth clubs, etc.

• Better organize efforts across labs

• Piggyback on local efforts to send out mailings

• Actual advertising - e.g. Facebook, Google AdWords, magazine or public transit ad space

Social media guidelines

This page has guidelines for researchers posting on social media about the Children Helping Science website, and about studies on CHS.

Here are the most important points:

• If you have already posted a study on CHS, you can advertise your study directly with a link to your study’s page on the CHS website. This way, parents can not only participate in your study but also help science by participating in other studies on CHS.

• Use the study link on your study details page (see screenshot below). Even if the family needs to create a CHS account, they’ll be redirected back to your study page after registering!

  

• When you advertise your study and the website, consider using our slogan “Fun for families, serious for science”. Both parts of that are good messages: we hope families enjoy these activities, and families should know that they are making a difference to developmental science!

• There are many studies available on the website from many universities: this is an exciting development for the entire field worldwide, rather than something about any individual study or university.

• There are a wide variety of study topics, and opportunities for nearly any child!

• If you post on Facebook or Twitter/X, feel free to share/retweet our posts, or to mention our accounts: “helping_science” on Twitter/X and “ChildrenHelpingScience” on Facebook.

• You can also use the hashtag #ChildrenHelpingScience.

If you have a study on CHS, here are examples of how you might post about it:

Sample Twitter/X Post

Sample Facebook Post