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LifeworksInclusive Guide

Recruiting and participants

Recruiting considerations

There are a series of tenants we want to build towards, using the Data Guide as a model:

  1. Establish an intention to be representative and work at it—this begins with recruiting practices.
  2. Achieve representationOpens in a new window over time—this does not happen with any single research project.
  3. Screening participants for factors beyond best product practices towards nuanced human and sociologic factors that define representation (as described in the Data Guide and expanded on in Module 2.)

Establishing a progressively outward research model

Mainly when serving marginalized communities or addressing topics that may be difficult or traumatic for some participants, we must set a foundation of participant support and consideration.

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Protect external participants

We should endeavour to not put the work of unpacking complex and difficult scenarios on participants.

We should not "put the work" of unpacking complex and difficult scenarios on participants from marginalized communities. Instead, we should establish a foundation of knowledge and validate our processes internally before engaging with external participants.

Set a foundation of knowledge

Use the LifeWorks Inclusive Guide, including Our Writing Guidelines—and the included resources around communicating care—to fully understand the challenges certain communities and participants may be facing.

Conduct additional desk research, as necessary, based on the research topic and mix of participants.

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Putting it into action

How might we:

  • frame our research to be more considerate of lived experience?
  • shift our language to engage more thoughtfully with participants?
  • learn more about communities and participants without unnecessarily or unexpectedly putting them in a position to teach us?

Starting difficult conversations

With a foundation of knowledge, we can be more intentional about engaging with people on complex topics outside our lived experience.

These are essential but delicate conversations.

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Putting it into action

Bringing potentially triggering or difficult topics of conversation to someone requires two standards of practice:

  1. Ensuring opt-in
  2. Freedom to opt out at any time

With these two standards in mind, we can go beyond ourselves and our team and direct support. In these cases, we are inviting people into the conversation who are not directly responsible for the success of our work, and we must lead with an attitude of protecting their space and keeping them safe.

We can best deliver on this approach by growing our foundation of knowledge through a progressively outward research model.

This means:

  1. Starting with our research.
  2. Enlisting the help of our direct support and project team members.
  3. Then going outside of our project team.

Ideally, this will extend to internal LifeWorks research participants before engaging with external participants.

Internal research participants

The benefit of an internal research group is that there can be a safe and formalized set of steps to ensure opt-in to the group and subsequent opt-in to specific conversations, along with opt-outs.

This setup can be lightweight, such as messaging the group or a group member on a particular topic or spending more time with a member or subset of the group for a more in-depth conversation.

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Putting it into action

A LifeWorks advisory group would ideally consist of:

  1. staff with a variety of lived experiences with therapy and CBT
  2. diverse employees across a spectrum of human and sociological factors

Note that such a group is not yet established within LifeWorks, but this is a consideration that is being explored.

External research participants

With the variety of knowledge and perspective from internal research, we can be more deliberate and considerate in how we engage external research participants.

There are four types of external research participant engagements to cultivate:

  1. Ad hoc: recruit as needed
  2. Ongoing: connect with and then retain access to participants for follow-up engagements.
  3. Advisory panel: establish an external advisory group of recruited participants, similar to the internal advisory group.
  4. Community organizations: connect with external organizations who support or are passionate about mental health support for diverse communities. Such organizations may have existing research, data, or stats and may be able to support recruiting or facilitating conversations.