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ProTip: An Ounce Of Research Prevention

By crooky | April 30, 2008

I am currently in a situation where I have to go back and re-survey a population almost a full year after the last time I contacted them. It’s difficult enough to nail down a decent sized population for an initial study but its even more difficult to go back and look at a similar population a year later. My secret - I always ask respondents on a survey if they’d be willing to let me contact them in future for follow-up information.
 This keeps me in compliance with the Privacy Act and it gives me a good intro when I do need to get back in touch with someone.

For example: I have just taken on a new contract with the University of British Columbia to help them develop a new graduate degree. I did the phase II research (after initial concept) in Spring 2007. I reported out on my findings at the time but identified a few gaps and recommended a follow-up focus group.

Just a few weeks ago, I got the greenlight to go ahead and do those focus groups. Rounding up participants was going to be a challenge. Fortuntely, I asked the respondents to the Spring 2007 survey if I could contact them again and had now I have a ready-made list of 100+ respondents complete with phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Best of all - they’ve all previously given me permission to contact them again.

I started calling and e-mailing folks earlier this week and I couldn’t be happier with the results. The majority of the respondents were actually happy to hear from me and my two focus groups are filling up fast. One of them is almost full after only two days and the other is half full.

It just goes to show - an ounce of prevention (in this case - leaving the door open for future contact) is worth a pound of cure (me pulling my hair out trying to identify research subjects on short notice).

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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Topics: Research Methodologies |

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