Recruitment

Publicly available contact information

When contact information is publicly available, you can directly contact those potential participants. These may include government officials or business leaders. Publicly available contact information may include phone numbers and email addresses from websites or business directories.

Agency, organization or institution permission

If recruiting participants through an agency, organization or institution, you have to seek approval to do so first and include this step in your recruitment process. Attach a recruitment letter outlining your proposed study and what they can do to assist.

If you’re conducting research that requires ethics clearance from at least 1 additional BC academic institution or BC health authority, see the guidelines for harmonized reviews.

The human research ethics board (HREB) examines if the privacy of potential participants is protected in the recruitment process.

An agency should not directly release the client names and contact information to a researcher. The agency may provide a recruitment letter/recruitment advertisement to potential participants on your behalf. This material normally includes your email or phone number so that interested people can contact you directly. This way, the agency will not know if the client participated or not and you will not know the identity of a client unless the client contacts you directly.

In some situations, you may need to contact the potential participants directly. Other situations may need an agency representative to ask clients’ permission to release their name and contact information to you. If you propose such a recruitment strategy, you must give a rationale for why this recruitment strategy is ethically necessary.

Note: this is only a concern when personal or private contact information is used; not professional or business contact information. 

Indigenous communities & peoples

The HREB does not have a specific policy on conducting ethical research with Indigenous peoples. You should consult directly with the specific communities. See the Community engagement section in the standard application guidelines, as well as Chapter 9 of the TCPS 2 for more information. 

Dual-role & power-over relationships

The HREB examines if you are in a dual-role or power-over relationship with potential participants. See Appendix II: Power-Over for more information on safeguards and power-over relationships/dual-role relationships.

Children under age of 13

Children under the age of 13 normally require authorization/consent from their parents/guardians to participate in a study.

• you must include recruitment information for parents/guardians
• you must also provide a recruitment letter, consent form, assent form or assent script for children, even young children

Depending on the nature of the study, it may be appropriate to either:

• have a single letter serve as a recruitment/consent letter for parents/guardians
• have a separate recruitment letter followed by a letter of consent for the parents/guardians

For children under 7 years of age, researchers typically use simple verbal assent scripts that outline:

• who the researcher is
• what the children will be asked to do
• why they are being asked to do the research activities
• what the researcher will do with the information
• that the child does not have to do the research activities if they do not want to
• that the child can stop whenever they want to and that is okay
• that even if their parents/guardians want them to participate, the child is the one who decides

It is important to remember that children have a veto right. 

Youth aged 13 to 16

In most cases, competent youth aged 13 to 16 can provide their own consent in minimal risk studies. Depending on the nature of the study, some researchers seek parent/guardian informed consent for youth involvement. Other researchers inform the parents/guardians about the study without requiring parental/guardian consent by sending parents/guardians an information letter.

When research is conducted in schools, some school districts require parental/guardian consent for students under the age of 19. You must adhere to the school district’s policy.