How we recruit participants for user research

Each year, 100+ students opt in to our user research participant pool. They are notified about surveys, interviews, and usability studies coordinated by our User Research Team.

Overview

The NC State University Libraries' User Research Team was established in 2012. We run 5–10 studies each year that take the form of surveys, interviews, usability studies, pop-up tables, diary studies, and more. These studies help us to ascertain user needs and assess Libraries services, spaces, and websites.

In order to run a study, we need participants. Sometimes we run a Tiny Café that benefits from a convenience sample. But for other kinds of user research involving students, it's challenging to recruit participants from scratch every time, so we implemented a process to create a participant pool of undergraduate and graduate students who opt in to receiving notifications about upcoming studies at the beginning of each academic year.

How We Did It

Each fall semester, we compile the student participant pool using these steps:

  1. Request a sample of 1,000–3,000 students (depending on our foreseeable needs) from the university's Institutional Strategy and Analysis office. 
    • Selection criteria: undergraduates and graduates proportional to the total population; college affiliation (e. g., College of Engineering) proportional to the population; gender proportional to the population.
  2. Remove students from the sample whom anyone in the Libraries has recently surveyed (within two years) or who have ever opted out of any prior survey.
  3. Send an email to the entire sample (bcc) with...
    • clear, welcoming text along the lines of: 
      Would you like to join our pool of potential participants for user testing at the NC State University Libraries? You can help us improve our services and website by participating in user research (like Zoom interviews or surveys). If you participate in a study, you will receive compensation for your time, for example, a $20 meal delivery. 
      We won't fill your inbox if you sign up. We anticipate sending around 5 emails each semester, and you’ll be able to take yourself off the list at any time. 
    • a link to this two-question survey in Qualtrics:
      1. Would you like to take part in user research studies from the Libraries this year? Yes / No
      2. Which of these assistive technologies do you use, if any (Select multiple: screen reader, high-contrast display, and other technologies listed)? 
  4. Send one follow-up reminder email to non-respondents.
  5. Compile a spreadsheet (viewable only by the User Research Team) with email addresses of those who opted in to taking part in user research studies. 

We've received an ~8% response rate to our opt-in/out survey in recent years. Typically, our final participant pool consists of 100–200 students (depending on the sample size of our request in Step 1).

When we're ready to recruit participants for a specific study, we send an invitation email to the entire pool (bcc). The email includes a description of the study and a link to a screening survey or the survey itself, depending on the study's methodology. In recent years, we've had a ~30% response rate from our participant pool.

Note: the studies that recruit from our student participant pool are done for internal program improvement. For studies that require an approved IRB protocol, we take extra steps not described here.

Team