Participant recruitment is one of the biggest challenges for any study. But, when you launch an Apple ResearchKit or ResearchStack-based study in the form of a mobile app, you’ll gain increased recruitment opportunities.
Mobile apps give you the power to reach out to a multitude of people across various demographics. By leveraging the tenets of mobility, your participant recruitment process will be more efficient and fruitful.
Here are 5 reasons why you should use mobile apps for your studies:
Why not consider building a study that people from anywhere can join? You can put your app in the App Store and make it available to people across different countries and continents. Imagine how much more value this brings in terms of participant numbers and diversity.
Everyone who falls in the likely broad definition of your primary target audience will typically have one thing in common – They are all smartphone users. So, you should attempt to identify these prospects in a mobile way.
Mobility is technology’s name for diversity. Capture participants with varied demographics for your mobile-app-based study, and as a result, you’ll create more cohorts than you ever thought possible.
Mobility helps you get a rich diversity of subjects from which to gather research data and insights:
The mobile medium helps you gather all this information and track data from different parts of the globe in real-time. The possibilities are limitless.
Gone are the days when recruitment for a study was a standalone exercise. Now it’s possible to launch several studies and recruit participants in parallel.
With the right technical assistance, you could build a framework for an app that allows you to spin up new studies, advertise for them, and run the participant onboarding process for each in parallel.
All you need to do is carefully identify the attributes of the target group for each study. Once you have this information, you can use it for targeted outreach and recruitment of participants.
Frameworks like Apple ResearchKit, when coupled with the right app design and back-end technology expertise, can make it very easy for you to sponsor, manage, and run various studies in parallel.
This is key to gaining the confidence of prospects and motivating them to be a part of your study. Ensure your mobile ads say enough about your study to get people interested and to make them see how they can contribute.
Leverage the Informed Consent Module of Apple ResearchKit to ensure it’s easy for them to understand and digest the study’s requirements and terms.
To make sure they’ve understood it well, ask them to take a quick quiz at the end of the Informed Consent Module. This will help people feel confident about participating in the study while also assuring you that they are well-informed.
Be sure to give something of value in return for your participants time and effort to be a part of your study.
Think about it – Wouldn’t they value getting insights and analysis into their habits, lifestyle, or condition based on the data they provided for the study? This could be at an individual or study population level. But these types of insights are always appreciated. People then see the tangible value in contributing to your study and its end goals.
You could also follow-up with participants after the study by providing them regular tips and helpful advice or updates on what’s new in the field of the study. If people find this useful, they might consider signing up for your next study or recommend it to people they know.
Offer them ways to share your studies with others via simple Share options in the app. They can post the information on social media, or email/SMS people about your study and app.
These are just a few thoughts on how your studies can benefit from using mobile apps. They are changing the face of participant recruitment and research.
Do you have a study idea in mind that you want to execute using Apple ResearchKit or similar frameworks? Reach out, and we can help you get there.
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