Participant recruitment for qualitative research: A site-based approach to community research in complex societies

Headnote

The process used to locate and recruit participants in a qualitative study is important for controlling bias and for efficiently obtaining a representative sample. In complex societies without clearly bounded groups from which to sample, participant recruitment requires especially careful consideration. Yet few qualitative researchers discuss their recruitment methods. This paper describes a site-based procedure for locating, selecting, and recruiting participants for qualitative research for communitybased research in contemporary societies. An example of this procedure applied in a study of nutrition and health among older adults of two rural counties in North Carolina is presented. Additional uses for this procedure are discussed. Key words: participant recruitment, sampling, research methods

In this paper we describe a procedure for locating, selecting, and recruiting participants for community-based qualitative research in contemporary societies. This "site-based" approach to participant recruitment is derived from our experiences in using a similar approach in a fixedresponse survey (Burt 1993; Quandt and Rao 1999), and our successful application of the procedure in a qualitative study conducted in two rural communities in the southeast United States (Arcury et al. 1998; Quandt, Arcury and Bell 1998).

The reasons for selecting participants included in an ethnographic or qualitative study and the process used to locate and recruit these participants are extremely important issues. The rationale for selecting specific participants must reflect the purpose or goals of the study, allowing the investigator to find representative individuals who have the characteristics being considered by the investigation. Despite its importance, there remains little discussion in the qualitative research literature of how the selection process actually takes place. Readers of qualitative research findings are provided little information to judge the appropriateness of sampling, and students new to the field have little insight into how qualitative sampling is carried out in a scientific research format.

Investigators in many qualitative studies do not explain how participants were located, selected, or recruited. For some studies, this is not a relevant issue. For example, in ethnographic studies in small villages, in classrooms, or in hospital wards, everyone in the social unit is included in the study. In other studies, the list of possible participants is known and small enough that all potential participants can be included (e.g., all of the physicians in a town,...