Which is better for research recruitment:  an agency or a platform

When it comes to conducting user research and finding a diverse pool of participants, businesses have two primary options: research recruitment agencies and participant recruitment platforms. While both serve the purpose of connecting researchers with participants, there are distinct differences between the two. In this article, we will explore each option and help you understand the unique advantages and considerations associated with research recruitment agencies and research recruitment platforms.

If your question is simply ‘which is the better option’, the boring answer unfortunately is that it depends. 

The simple reason is that your choice between a participant recruitment platform like Respondent and a research agency could vary from one research project to another, depending on the following factors:

• Speed - How soon do you need to finish recruiting participants for your project?
• Difficulty - How easy or difficult is it to find your target audience?
• Budget - How much are you willing to spend on recruitment fees and on participant incentives
• Screening - How important is it for your team to be able to screen candidates before starting research, and are you open to outsourcing screening completely to an agency?
• Quality - How much leeway are you willing to give for soft factors such as articulation or language skills? Which method of quality assessment is a better fit for your needs - past project participation history and feedback or a manual background check?

How research recruitment agencies work:

A research recruitment agency specializes in the process of finding and screening participants for research studies. These agencies have dedicated teams that handle participant recruitment, ensuring a streamlined and efficient process. Each agency may offer a slightly different catalog of services, and may specialize in specific industries such as healthcare or C-suite professionals, with appropriately differentiated pricing.

Here are some key characteristics of research recruitment agencies:

1. Expertise and Experience: Research recruitment agencies possess in-depth knowledge and expertise in participant recruitment. They understand the intricacies of finding the right participants for various research studies, including usability testing, focus groups, surveys, and interviews. These agencies often have access to sizable databases of potential participants, typically in specific countries and/or industries.
   
   
2. Customized Approach: Research recruitment agencies work closely with researchers to understand their specific needs and requirements. They tailor their participant recruitment process accordingly, taking into account factors such as demographics, target audience, location, and research objectives. This personalized approach ensures that the recruited participants align with the study's goals.
   
   
3. Screening and Pre-Qualification: Research recruitment agencies undertake the responsibility of screening and pre-qualifying participants. They can conduct thorough assessments on the researchers’ behalf to ensure that participants meet the necessary criteria, such as age, gender, occupation, or specific expertise. This screening process helps researchers to focus on their core activities while relying on the agency's expertise for participant selection.
   
   
4. Quality Assurance: Research recruitment agencies place a strong emphasis on participant quality. They have established procedures to verify the credibility and reliability of participants. This includes conducting background checks, verifying qualifications, and assessing participants' suitability for the research study. By maintaining high standards of quality, these agencies ensure that researchers receive valuable insights from reliable participants.
   
   
5. Low-intent participants: Choosing a research agency for research involves a ‘push’ strategy, where the agency conducts outreach on your behalf to find relevant candidates, contact them with a pitch and find interested candidates among that list to then screen and recruit. A potential participant may be unfamiliar with the recruiting agency and/or the brand conducting research, which could lead to credibility gaps, scam and phishing concerns, since this is a cold outreach program.

How a research participant recruitment platform works:

A research recruitment platform, on the other hand, serves as a technology-driven marketplace or software solution that facilitates the connection between researchers and potential participants. These platforms offer a self-service approach with optional expert support as an add-on, enabling researchers to manage participant recruitment independently. 

Here is why research recruitment works on a platform like Respondent makes sense:

1. Accessibility and Convenience: Research recruitment platforms provide researchers with direct access to a deep and diverse pool of millions of potential participants. These platforms typically have large databases of individuals who have registered their interest in participating in research studies. Researchers can search and filter participants based on specific criteria and directly reach out to them for recruitment.
   
   
2. Flexible and Fast: Most participant recruitment platforms offer a self-service model, empowering researchers to handle participant recruitment on their own. A researcher on Respondent or User Interviews can often find their first matched participant within an hour of publishing their project. Researchers can create research projects, define their audience targeting criteria, and communicate with potential participants through the platform.
   
   This level of control and independence can be appealing for researchers who prefer a hands-on approach to recruitment. It also works very well for organizations that have several research projects running simultaneously and with varied tools, audiences and methodologies.
   
   
3. Cost-Effectiveness: Research recruitment platforms often offer cost-effective solutions for participant recruitment. Researchers can either select a pay-as-you-go plan or pay a subscription to access the platform for cheaper recruiting costs and connect with participants. This pricing model can be advantageous for researchers on a tight budget or those who conduct frequent research studies and require ongoing access to participants. Using a research participant marketplace can often save researchers up to 80% on recruiting costs as compared to agencies.
   
   
4. Semi-Automated Screening: Participants create a profile and apply to paid research studies on platforms such as Respondent, all of which creates a wealth of behavioral data that these platforms use to assess participant quality. In addition to behavioral data, a platform like Respondent uses work-email verification and a robust set of quality protocols to ensure that a participant is who they say they are and brings unique insights and can communicate them effectively.
   
   Researchers that use a platform like Respondent, can create a custom screener questionnaire with advanced branching logic, to further qualify participants who apply, and even contact applicants to confirm their expertise or assess their ability to articulate their insights, prior to actually conducting research. This offers a terrific amount of flexibility and confidence to researchers as they can filter for exactly the profiles they want. This does require that researchers invest time and effort into evaluating participants and ensuring they meet the desired criteria, but participant quality is one of biggest determinants of research success, and this is a challenge many researchers prefer to embrace.
   
   
5. High-intent participants: Since participants actively opt-in when they sign up for a research recruitment platform, they can be classified as highly motivated to provide actionable insights during research. They tend to be familiar with the steps involved, from accurately creating their profile, taking screeners, completing the research tasks and collecting incentives. Participants also enjoy a trusted relationship with the platform, secure in the knowledge that this is a legitimate exchange of information and that their data is held to the highest security standards.

Choosing the Right Option for Participant Recruitment:

At Respondent, we love research agencies and serve a number of them as our customers. We borrow some of the best practices developed by specialist participant recruiters at agencies to fine tune our qualification and matching algorithms and are happy to collaborate with them in furthering our common goal of helping uncover insights for better products and experiences!

When deciding between a research recruitment agency and a participant recruitment platform, consider your specific research needs, resources, and preferences and keep in mind that these may even vary from one study to the next. It is increasingly common for research recruitment agencies to also use participant recruitment platforms as a force multiplier on behalf of their clients, as just another tool in their array of channels to find relevant participants. 

Research teams which have a steady need for participants throughout the year have a lot to gain from using a participant recruitment platform as their first choice, thanks to their cost-effectiveness, speed, automation and flexibility for use across any research methodology. Recruitment agencies are a more suitable choice for complex or specialized studies or when one of the participant marketplaces simply has not yielded results, subject to budget constraints.