Should We Mention a Specific Contact Person If a Whole Team Will Be Making the Calls?

While your contact process mainly remains your prerogative, we would make the following suggestions (based on our Best Practice Guides) when reaching out to referrals:

Have one team member dedicated to a specific referral:

• Passing a single participant around numerous study team members may give the individual the sense that they're just another 'number in the system' or a 'cog in the machine'.
• Having a single recruiter dedicated to a specific participant helps develop the participant-researcher relationship, which is imperative to maintaining participants' interest during your recruitment process.

  • For more information on the participant-researcher relationship, please view the Best Practice guide here: The Participant-Researcher Relationship

    
    

Provide a clear, direct contact number (and email if possible)

• We recommend including a dedicated phone number in the outreach communications (e.g., in the confirmation email participants receive after passing the prescreener).
• This allows participants to recognize the call or reach out proactively if they have questions.
• Sharing a direct contact number is generally more effective than sharing an email address alone. However, providing both is ideal - some participants may prefer to speak with someone directly, while others might feel more comfortable reaching out via email.