SEER Webinar 6: Challenges & Strategies for Study Recruitment in Education Research on Aug 21, 2024

Recruitment is an essential component of successful education research. To support an understanding of what works, for whom, and under what conditions, researchers need to recruit a sample that is large enough and can generalize to populations of interest. While recruiting districts and schools to participate in research has always been challenging, there is some evidence to suggest that it has become even more challenging since the COVID-19 pandemic.

This 90-minute webinar offers practical strategies for researchers who are recruiting districts and schools to participate in education research. These strategies address common factors that may influence districts’ and schools’ ability and willingness to participate in research, including alignment with priorities and needs, staff capacity, beliefs about random assignment, and comfort with providing data. Dana Robinson, a researcher and experienced study recruiter at Mathematica, opens the webinar with an overview of Practical Strategies for Recruiting Districts and Schools for Education Impact Studies, a brief she recently co-authored to help researchers implement the Institute of Education Sciences’ (IES) Standards for Excellence in Education Research. She then facilitates an interactive panel discussion composed of researchers who conduct recruitment and district staff who make decisions about study participation or support research staff. Panelists discuss their experiences recruiting and participating in research and will answer questions posed by webinar attendees.

Panelists:

- Sarah Dickson is the Director of External Research at Chicago Public Schools. She develops the strategic direction of district research partnerships, manages and supports external research partners, and oversees the implementation of research projects across the district. In conjunction with the district’s senior leadership, Sarah works to establish priority research areas and develop research projects to support the improvement of practice in those areas.
- Rinat Fried is a Research Associate at Oakland Unified School District. She focuses on elementary literacy data and works with external researchers to support the district’s participation in research. Rinat has worked with researchers from Mathematica, Northwestern University’s Center for Education Efficacy, Excellence, and Equity, Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University.
- Jason Snipes is a Senior Research Scientist and the Director of Applied Research at the Regional Educational Laboratory West at WestEd. He has over 27 years of experience conducting rigorous applied research, with a particular emphasis on collaborating with districts and schools to develop, implement, evaluate, and disseminate strategies to improve outcomes among Black and Latinx students. Jason currently co-leads a research practice partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District focused on achieving equitable discipline outcomes for Black students.
- Anja Kurki is a Managing Researcher at the American Institutes for Research. She has over 20 years of experience conducting large, national impact evaluations and specializes in recruitment and implementation oversight. Anja has successfully led recruitment of districts and schools for several national IES evaluations on topics including teacher professional development, parent engagement, and multi-tiered systems of support for students.