Five Tips for Building a Great Screener
A well-crafted, coherent, structured screener is key to any research project's success. The screener document provides a firm foundation of questions to confirm the qualification and suitability of potential participants for your study, therefore making it a vital part of our recruitment process.
Below, we have listed five tips to consider when building your screener and how this can help to achieve positive results within your study
Things to consider when developing your screener:
What are the fundamental ‘screen-in’ criteria for an individual to participate in your study? Ensure this is well reflected as watertight screener questions, so we can categorically determine whether a respondent is a good fit for the research interview. Some examples of fundamental/hard screener criteria questions include country, industry, seniority, job responsibilities etc.
Ideally, if a respondent were to complete the screener, match with the study's criteria, and thus qualify to participate - there should be no need to ask follow-up questions afterwards. So please ensure all information you wish to capture is included in the screener questions. This will streamline the recruitment process, making your research fieldwork more efficient.
Multiple choice screener questions are often most effective when identifying potential participants for your study. Where possible, please provide a relevant list of answers to the questions you wish to ask in the screener, as choosing from a pre-established code frame will help reduce respondent fatigue. However, open-ended questions can also be useful when detail or context is needed (e.g. providing a couple of sentences on the specifics of an individual’s role and responsibilities etc.)
Consider whether some elements of the project criteria could possibly open up further down the line. A ‘close screen-out’ answer during the initial stages of the study, may in fact become a ‘screen-in’ answer as the project scope evolves and shifts over the given timeframe. Think of questions that could capture information to preempt this, which would aid recruitment speed as per point 2.
It’s essential that all questions are grammatically coherent, relevant to the study, and have been proofread. This will help remove potential misinterpretations or misunderstandings by any potential research participant.
Having a compliant screener will lead to the successful delivery of your research project. And, as always, we’ll be here to assist you every step of the way!