Recruiting participants — Examples

Example 1 — Criteria, screening and a fair message

The first-time buyer study needs six people who have recently bought with a new payment method. The team’s first idea is to post in the company’s own community and ask colleagues to forward it. Write the screening criteria, the screening questions and the recruitment message, and state the incentive.

Study: first-time buyer checkout, 45 minutes, remote.
Planned reach: internal community post, forwarded by colleagues.
Offer on the table: one voucher, no-show rate unknown.

Solution

Criteria (behaviour, not demographics):
1. bought online in the last 14 days
2. used a payment method not saved before
3. not employed in design, research or software
4. not known to anyone on the team

Screening questions, one per criterion:
1. "When did you last buy something online?"
2. "Did you enter card details you had not saved there before?"
3. "Do you or anyone in your household work in design, research or
   software?"
4. "Do you know anyone on our team?"

Message: "We are studying how people pay for things online. It is a
45-minute call this week, and we send a voucher for the time. No
preparation needed. If that fits, reply with a time."

Route: a follow-up email to recent buyers, not the company's community.

Incentive: one voucher proportionate to the 45 minutes, paid after the
call. Expect one in four slots to go empty, so book extra sessions.

Every criterion describes something the person has done, so screening answers can be checked rather than assumed, and the criterion is behaviour rather than demographics. The insider question removes colleagues and professional testers in one line; the route reaches people just after the behaviour happened; the message says what the session involves without naming what it tests. The figure usually left out is the no-show rate, and the usual mistake is a message that explains the hypothesis, which lets participants arrive primed and rehearse.