The right representatives: Recruiting the best for your research
2004 Conference
A presentation and explanation of the Maternity Alliance’s User Representation Recruitment and Evaluation Tools, designed to help organisations to recruit consumers/users/lay representatives to steering/working groups and committees. These representatives add great value to research projects. However, our experience told us that insufficient research by an organisation leads to he wrong representatives, and tokenism, on projects. Proper consideration of recruitment should take place early in the research cycle, and good recruitment will resonate throughout the cycle.
The first tool is a detailed questionnaire designed to identify exactly what an organisation is looking for in a representative, and how that representative is expected to help their research.
The second tool provides the lay representative with the chance to record their experiences after their involvement with the organisation has ended. This helps to judge the overall success of a project.
The tool was piloted in 2002 to an enthusiastic response.
The presentation will explain the rationale behind, and development of, the Tools. The format of the Tools, and the results of the pilot will be discussed.
Issues for Discussion:
– the value of lay representatives
– the problem of poor recruitment of lay representatives
– the wide application of our Tools for organisations involved in research
Authors
« Go back
