Recruitment materials in a Purdue Global application: flyers, emails and scripts, exactly as they will run

What does Purdue Global actually require?

Two things, and the guidelines keep them separate. The submission guidelines list a recruitment plan, needed where the study runs surveys or interviews, and then list "any recruitment materials" underneath it. The submission checklist mirrors that structure: one line item, the subject recruitment plan, carrying its materials with it.

The plan answers procedural questions. Who will you approach, and how did that group come to be the group? Through which channel does the approach travel — an organisation's mailing list, a public board, a professional group, a platform? Who does the approaching, and what is their relationship to those approached? How many times may somebody be contacted before contact stops? The materials answer none of that. They are the artefacts themselves, and they carry the weight because they are what a person actually reads.

Why does a board read a flyer at all?

Because recruitment is not a preliminary to the ethics of a study; it is part of them. Federal guidance on recruiting puts the principle in one sentence — direct advertising for participants is considered "the start of the informed consent and subject selection process" — so advertisements are reviewed as part of the package at initial review, with later additions treated as an amendment. That guidance was written for clinical trials, but the reasoning is what every board applies: the first page a person reads is where their decision begins, so it is where protection begins.

Purdue Global's own framing sharpens why this matters outside a clinic. Its board treats harm as participants' answers travelling beyond the research and exposing them to legal jeopardy, or costing them standing at work, employability, reputation. Picture the recruitment poster on the break-room wall of the unit you work in, naming a study about that unit's practice. Nobody has answered a question yet and the exposure already exists — who is seen reading it, who is seen approaching you afterwards, who is conspicuously absent.

What may a recruitment piece say, and what may it not?

The federal guidance is specific in both directions. A recruitment piece should generally be limited to what a person needs in order to work out whether they are eligible and whether they are interested. The guidance lists items that may appropriately appear, while noting that not all are required:

• the name and address of the researcher or the research facility;
• the condition under study, or the purpose of the research;
• the eligibility criteria, in summary form;
• a brief list of the benefits of taking part, if there are any;
• the time or other commitment being asked of participants; and
• the location of the research, and the person or office to contact for more information.

The prohibitions are equally concrete. A piece must not be unduly coercive, and must not state or imply a certainty of favourable outcome or any benefit beyond what the consent document and the protocol support — a caution flagged as especially critical where those approached may be susceptible to undue influence. Where compensation exists it may be mentioned but not emphasised, and the guidance names the mechanism it has in mind: not by larger or bolder type. A board is also expected to review the final printed copy for type size and other visual effects — which tells you it is looking at a designed page, not a paragraph of text.

That last point surprises candidates. Layout carries meaning. A benefit set in a heading and a risk set in small print are not neutral typography; they are an argument about what matters, made to somebody deciding whether to take part.

What does submitting a final look like, piece by piece?

The unifying test is simple. If a reviewer cannot see the words a participant will see, the piece has not been submitted; it has been promised.

What happens to the people who say no?

This is the part of a recruitment plan most files never write down, and the federal guidance addresses it under the heading of scripts. Its questions are worth borrowing: what becomes of personal information if somebody breaks off the conversation or hangs up; whether names of people found ineligible are kept in case another study suits them; whether paper records are shredded or put out with readable rubbish. A bare assurance about confidentiality, the guidance says, tells a board nothing about the procedures actually used.

So the plan says what happens to a screening reply that goes nowhere. It says who holds the list of people approached, and how long that list outlives its purpose. And in workplace or classroom research it says how a decline is kept from being noticed — which usually means routing recruitment away from anybody holding authority over the person deciding. What the plan promises here must match what your data security plan promises, because a screening list is data even when nobody was recruited from it.

Where does recruitment meet permission?

At the channel. Purdue Global's guidelines put website approval to post a recruitment notice among their examples of agency approval, noting such approval may come back as a standard template the website issues. And where recruiting runs through a site such as a Facebook group, the guidelines require the platform's Terms of Use to be referenced, naming Facebook's own terms page as the example.

Two questions therefore follow every channel in your plan. Who owns it, and have they agreed in writing? And what do that channel's own rules permit? An employer's distribution list, a professional association's newsletter, a moderated group and a public board are four different owners with four different answers — each a page in the file rather than an assumption. The agency approval article covers who signs.

Where does the eligibility dimension drift?

Recruitment is where the study's population is stated publicly for the first time, and where that statement most often stops matching the rest of the file. Four checks before anything is submitted:

• Eligibility. The criteria summarised on the flyer are the criteria in the methodology and the criteria described in the consent. Three documents, one population.
• Commitment. What the flyer asks of a participant is what the consent describes and what the procedures actually take.
• Benefit. Whatever the flyer offers, the consent supports — and nothing on the flyer promises an outcome the study cannot produce.
• Contact. The person and address on the flyer are the person and address on the application and the consent.

Each is one dimension measured in more than one place, and a return usually names the smallest of them. The application checklist shows what else is being measured at the same time; the step-by-step route shows when the pack has to be finished.

How we build the recruitment pack

We start from the plan, not the poster: the population, the channel, who owns it, who does the approaching, and how a decline stays invisible. Then every piece is drafted as a finished artefact — flyer laid out, email complete with its subject line, script written through to the sentence ending a call with somebody ineligible, referral wording actually written — and each is measured against the consent and the application for eligibility, commitment, benefit and contact. Where a channel needs permission or a platform's terms referenced, that goes into the file beside the piece it belongs to. Our how-it-works sheet and the questions page cover the rest. The study is yours; the determination belongs to the board.

What to do next

If your recruitment plan currently reads as a paragraph describing what you intend to circulate, it is not yet a recruitment pack — and that is quick to fix. Ask for the free application review and send whatever exists. We will tell you which pieces need drafting, which channels need written permission, and whether your eligibility wording says the same thing everywhere it appears.

Sources

• Purdue University Global IRB — Submission Guidelines (recruitment plan and materials; platform terms)
• Purdue Global IRB Submission Checklist (the subject recruitment plan)
• Purdue University Global IRB — Home and FAQ (how the board describes harm to participants)
• FDA — Recruiting Study Subjects (Information Sheet) (advertising as the start of consent; permitted content; screening scripts)
• 45 CFR 46.111 — equitable selection and safeguards