Reaching ‘hard-to-reach’ participants

Abstract

The recruitment of participants is an important step which contributes to the success of any study involving human participants, but accessing and recruiting prospective participants can be a challenging task. Drawing on direct experience, this article describes the challenges faced and the strategies adopted in order to gain access and recruit members of a gated religious community as research participants. In all, it suggests that transparency in reporting recruitment methods could benefit the research community.

Keywords

• recruitment process
• gated religious community
• hard-to-reach participants