Why a small recruitment quota can be difficult to fill

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“We only need six people.”

It sounds like a straightforward recruitment request. Sometimes it is. But the number of participants is only one part of the picture.

The difficulty often lies in how many requirements someone must meet at the same time, and whether those people can make the commitment the study needs.

Requirements combine to narrow the audience

• Consider a hypothetical playtest needing six players of a particular game.
• Now add that they must have reached a certain stage, live within travelling distance of the venue and be available for three consecutive weekdays.
• Each requirement may be reasonable on its own. Together, they create a much smaller pool of potential participants.
• Finding people who play the game is the starting point. We also need to establish who meets the remaining criteria and can attend.

Practical availability matters

• Someone can be an excellent match for the audience and still be unable to participate.
• Work, education, caring responsibilities and travel can all affect availability. For remote studies, equipment and technical requirements may narrow the audience further.
• That makes the full participation commitment important to feasibility. A short evening interview and a multi-day weekday playtest are different recruitment tasks, even when the gaming criteria are identical.

Separate essentials from preferences

• One useful early discussion is which requirements are essential to the research and which would simply be helpful.
• For example, does every participant need experience of two particular games, or would experience of either be sufficient? Must everyone attend the same session, or could alternative times work?
• These are research decisions for the client. Our role is to explain the recruitment implications and identify options worth considering.
• We discuss proposed changes with you before acting on them.

Allow time to understand the response

• For a tightly defined audience, the first applications can help reveal where the difficulty lies.
• Perhaps suitable players are applying but cannot attend the proposed dates. Perhaps one quota is progressing well while another is proving much more restrictive.
• Clear updates make those distinctions visible and support informed decisions while there is still time to respond.
• At Gromotion, we assess the audience, practical commitment and quota combinations together. That gives clients a more useful view of feasibility than participant numbers alone.

Have a small but tightly defined audience in mind? Get in touch to chat or share a brief.