Tag Archives: flyer

Recruiting Non-Students

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The preliminary analysis is now complete, and my ‘brief’ summaries of each theme turned into 30 pages and 16,000 words of analysis (predictably, oh how I like to waffle!). Apparently though, there was some good stuff in there, which was great to hear (as I said before, if the data wasn’t rich enough or wasn’t answering the research questions, there may be trouble ahead)… One thing that really came through the analysis was the ways in which students construct a student/local binary and talk about local, working women in particular (often classed and aged) ways. I need to target my remaining recruitment efforts for the second half of the interviews at non-students / locals / women who work in Newcastle. This is proving slightly more challenging than the student recruitment! I’ve almost lost count of the number of high street shops and supermarkets where the staff have kindly agreed to leave some flyers in the staff room for me, plus I’ve left some for the general public in cinemas, cafes and bars, alongside revitalising my Facebook recruitment… However this has only lead to one more interview so far so really going to have to think about what additional mechanisms I can use if these continue to prove relatively unsuccessful.

Recruitment continues…

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Well after a nice and relaxing Christmas break it is back and full steam ahead with recruitment. I’ve presented at a couple of Newcastle Uni lectures now, and had a great opportunity today to go and talk to dance students at Newcastle College, laden down with a big stack of flyers! This has been an important step as I’m interested in talking to a wide range of both students and local young women from a broad range of backgrounds and who may be working or undertaking academic or vocational courses.

I have another interview lined up and a couple of expressions of interest, which is great, and I’m trying to make real use of social media to help raise the profile of the research – I really think there are good opportunities to be had here as social media has the potential to reach so many people.

I’ve also managed to secure some good opportunities to talk to geography students at Northumbria University, including 1st, 2nd and 3rd years (this is particularly useful as it would be good to be able to interview a broad range of ages and see how age as a factor comes into the analysis).

First interview done!

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On 29/11 I completed my first interview! A real milestone in the project.

I’ve also printed 200 nice shiny flyers, they look great (Emily’s research flyer)!

Also been doing a bit of reading in the last few days and really enjoying engaging with the literature again, I think it can be easy for that side of your work and research to become neglected once you become caught up in the practicalities of recruitment and pilots! But it is nice to get back to, it puts everything back into context and reminds you of why you’re doing the project and what you’re passionate about finding out in the first place. Can be easy to get bogged down in the little details of what colour scheme to use for a flyer so it is nice to have a real reminder of the bigger picture!

September

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This month I have been starting to think in more detail about the recruitment process and methodology, exploring different potential avenues for recruitment and trying to figure out the types of populations these routes will target. I’m working on a recruitment timeline, trying to make it more strategic so that I have a more coherent approach to the project and can deploy different strategies at different times (thinking, for example, about university term dates and holidays, specific events etc). Some of the early issues I have encountered have been that I have been suggesting a sort of ‘hands-off’ approach, when I need to look in more detail at some of the more face-to-face mechanisms I can utilise. I know I am focusing quite heavily on the use of a dedicated account on Facebook, however I really can see the potential value in this. So many of my target demographic use Facebook that I think it would be a mistake to overlook it, plus it offers a way for me to proactively target different night out pages and events, many of which have over 10,000 subscribers. This makes Facebook a free and low-effort way to reach a huge target population, plus it can be used as an ongoing process (e.g. targeting pages for upcoming events) rather than a one-off, meaning I can be flexible and responsive in how it is used, for example depending on which populations I need to target.

Alongside this, I need to ensure my research documentation (consent forms, information sheets, flyers and posters) are up to date and ready to go when the study is launched (hopefully at the start of November).

And of course, the interview and focus group schedules are constantly being developed and fine-tuned in the background. Obviously I don’t want to start trying to recruit if I am still some way off actually starting the research, as potential participants are more likely to lose interest. On the other hand however, I will need to balance this with ‘putting the feelers out’ for recruitment sufficiently early as there may be some time lag in securing participants.