Recruiting and inviting people to take part in research

Owned by Louise Roddan
Last updated: Dec 02, 2022
4 min read

This guide is intended to help support you with how to reach and contact people to take part in user research. It will cover: 

  1. Methods to reach people with lived experience 

  2. Communicating to people with lived experience (with templates)

  3. Reducing the risk of a data breach 

  4. Collecting informed consent 

  5. Standards for storing research data 

Methods to reach people with lived experience at Shelter  

This is work in progress and currently saved here https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOM8vHF8=/  

Communicating to people with lived experience 

When inviting people to take part in user research be honest and transparent about what data you are collecting about them. Think carefully about what you are collecting and only collect data that helps you answer your research goal.

!Important! If you’re not sure what your research goal is, here’s a guide to help you frame it. Don’t involve users until you are clear what you need from them. 

You must include the following in your communication: 

  • What you are doing and why 

  • What you are asking the user to take part in 

  • Who they can contact to ask questions about the process and processing of data? (Get in touch with UserResearch@shelter.org.uk if you want to use this email address as the contact. We recommend this contact is a shared, monitored email address). 

  • How can they opt out of further communications 

  • A link to the main Shelter privacy notice 

  • A way to opt out of further communication 

  • Why they are receiving the invitation

Templates 

A user recruitment email template: 

We recommend sending this from a shared inbox so that it’s monitored in your absence. Contact UserResearch@shelter.org.uk to use this address. 

My name is [insert] and I am [insert what you are doing and why]. I’d like to invite you to [insert activity]. 

The activity will take [insert time] and we have sessions between [insert dates].   

To take part [insert how to take part, we suggest using a Microsoft Booking for moderated research]. If you have any problems using the booking system, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at UserResearch@shelter.org.uk.  

[Insert if services - Please note that our researchers will not be able to provide any housing, welfare or debt advice during the call.] 

As part of our data protection processes, at the start of the session we’ll ask for your consent about how we can record, use and securely store anything you tell us. You can also read more about this in our privacy policy at http://www.shelter.org.uk/privacy    

Thank you for your time and we hope to hear from you soon.    [Sign off] 

You’re receiving this email because [insert how we collected their data]. You can opt-out of future emails about this research project, or change your communication preferences at any time by emailing us at [UserResearch@shelter.org.uk]. We will never sell or swap your details for marketing purposes. For our full privacy policy, please visit http://www.shelter.org.uk/privacy

 

[Work in progress - insert templates / examples here for Ethnio here]        

Reducing the risk of a data breach 

If you are emailing people in bulk, we recommend emailing via a mail merge from a shared email account such as UserResearch@shelter.org.uk and ask a colleague to watch you do the final steps. We have some mail merge tip and guidance here. 

If a mail merge is not possible, you must as a minimum use ‘bcc’ to reduce the risk of a data breach. This method is less effective as will likely hit spam filters.  

If you do share data (this includes email addresses) you need to report it to the Data Protection Team via data_protection@shelter.org.uk  

Before you conduct any research and collect any data from a person you must ensure they give their informed consent to what is being collected about them, how it is recorded, with whom it will be shared and how long we will retain the data for. 

It is ideal if this is collected ahead of the research session so that adaptions can be made in advance but at the very least you must go through this verbally with the person at the beginning of your research session.  

We have a template here: Informed consent form 2021.docx

And here is a template for a digital version which can be shared with participants via link, and filled in on any device: Digital Informed Consent Form  

Standards for storing user research data 

Store research data securely

Keep your research only in places that Shelter has approved for storing personal data. SharePoint is the only approved location for storing data. Personal data must be password protected. When data is collected in research tools such as Userlytics or Ethnio, this should be deleted as soon as possible.  

Data retention

Maintain your research and only keep it for as long as you need it. We suggest 2 years but delete it sooner if it’s no longer needed.  

User research log

User research can be incentivised. Here’s Shelter’s policy on incentives, this must be followed to ensure we do not cause challenges with users benefits entitlements.  

Name and organise data

Work in progress – using GDS as a guide