Hi all,
As before I can see your point and obviously there are limitations with it that need to be addressed but the idea is at its earliest stage in recognition of the frustration in finding participants. It is the wording of the idea being "Participants registry" that screams unrepresentative group however, as I mentioned before there isnt a study out there that can be seen as completely unbiased, what about the usage of students? surely they are an unrepresentative group, more so than a participant registry as they tend to have many more things in common as a group. Perhaps if participants were asked at the onset of a study if they would mind their name being supplied to a third party for further research purposes, (with all ethical issues considered)it could work? Many researchers do use previous participants again, isn't this unrepresentative? I think this idea's unconventional and people are concerned about the idea of using a group per se but when the issues are dealt with, i!
s i
t really that different to using say, students or previous participants?
sara
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On Mon, 17 Mar 2003 09:46:14
Diana Rofail wrote:
>Dear all,
>
>My views are definitely in agreement with Bruce.
>
>I certainly see the convenience of a participants registry BUT I think that
>there would be far too much bias with such data.
>
>Use of a participant registry might be helpful in the very early stages of
>designing a project i.e. to liase with people about meanings of questions
>for designing an instrument to be used in a pilot study. At these very early
>stages, most people do not want to discuss representativeness and
>generalisation. However, I would aim to target people who would use the
>instrument. In addition, I would rather target people who are unfamiliar
>with research design and implementation so as to avoid bias. Furthermore,
>the sheer fact that some people may join a participant registry instantly
>suggests that such people are in some way different from those who do not
>belong or wish to join the registry.
>
>Therefore, use of a participant registry raises too many controversial
>issues. Perhaps, a good idea in the initial stages of designing a project.
>
>Kind regards,
>
>
>Diana Rofail, MSc
>Researcher
>Health Services Research Department
>Institute of Psychiatry
>London
>
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