For my project I interviewed people of color that have recently given birth about their birth experience. When I started this project I knew finding individuals to participate was going to be difficult because birth is a really personal experience, many people of color don’t feel they can trust the medical system, and I don’t personally know a lot of people that qualify for the study so I knew a bulk of my interviewees were going to be complete strangers. 

It is important to note that from the start I knew I wanted to compensate my participants because I felt that was most ethical. I paid participants the equivalent of $25 dollars because I thought that was a high enough amount for the hour long interview, but not too high that I would 1) run out of funds 2) draw in qualifying individuals that weren’t really interested in my study, 

The first way I tried to get interviewees was by reaching out to the people in my personal life to see if they knew anyone that qualified. I did this because I thought if a potential participant learned about my study from someone they trusted, they were more likely to trust me. I got a few participants this way, but not that many people. 

By a similar logic, I reached out to organizations that were trusted by and served my target community. It was a bit harder to get organizations to promote the study on my behalf because, for the most part, I didn’t have previous relationships with the organizations. Promoting through organizations with a smaller number of members that only served my target audience was much more successful compared to promoting through larger organizations that also served individuals outside of my target population. 

Throughout the first five weeks those were my main two promotion techniques, but I still didn’t have as many interviews as I would have liked. This led to my final promotion strategy: posting my flier on public Facebook groups that were designed for moms of color. To my surprise, that was my most successful promotion strategy of the three. Less than a week after posting in the public Facebook groups I had over 50 sign-ups. Some ended up being no-shows and some were trying to scam me (they were signing up again and again under different names for the money), but since I was willing to be patient and spend energy managing the situation, it ended up being really successful.

In the end I was totally wrong about what pathway was going to be the best for getting participants, and retrospectively I still don't know why one strategy worked better than the other. I can say that compensating my interviewees was a great choice because most of them wouldn't have, and honestly couldn't have, participated.