Last week was another successful week, however, I am having a lot of trouble with cancellations and time zones. In my emails to schedule, I always clarify that we are running the trials in the EST time zone. My participants are from different locations and sometimes they forget about the time difference. On the morning of the trial, I always email them to remind them and to confirm the time. If they don’t confirm, I still show up to the meeting and wait. This has been more frustrating recently, however, because participants cancel 1 minute before their study or they don’t show up at all. I understand things come up, but it is discouraging to plan your day around participants for them to not show up. Any recommendations on a possible way to make scheduling more efficient?
Hi Amanda!
I have had my fair share of participants not showing up for appointments as well. Not only that, but more and more seem to never get around to responding to my messages even after missing their appointment. I think this is really just part of the challenge of research and most likely has nothing to do with how we are scheduling participants. My only recommendation would be to set your schedule in their time zone to see if them not knowing the time is the problem. My participants are in Poland, so I have my schedule listed in the CEST time zone and message them a day in advance to remind them of their appointment. It gets a little confusing as I have to keep track of everything in two time zones, but I at least believe that this makes it easier for the participants. Good luck with recruiting! I hope more participants can show up to your appointments!
Hey Amanda! I have been having similar issues, but I have found that possibly trying to include the time zone that they are most likely in, in your scheduling email may help. When I was scheduling with a few of my participants I was stating times in only EST, but they would send an extra few emails to confirm the time in their time zone. I then started including Spain time zones in my emails, to avoid any possible confusion. I am not sure if this will help with people cancelling last minute, but it might make it easier for them to confirm the correct time zone to start. Good luck!
Hi Amanda! I don’t know if this would help or not, (maybe you already do something similar), but I usually send participants three emails – one to schedule, one two days before the study with the zoom link and details, and one the morning of the study with the Zoom link again. I include the time of the study in EST and in CEST in each email so that participants have more than one place to look. I also always write the EST first, then the CEST time for consistency’s sake.
Another thing to consider is if you have some sort of availability survey that you’re working with so that you know when people should be available? If you do, do participants have to convert time between time zones or do you do that for them? If you’re not already converting it for them, I would consider doing that as well so that ‘time’ is a less confusing thing for them to deal with.
I doubt this one would appy much since we are all emailing are participants as people and not as machines, but the more ‘person-like’ you seem in emails, the more likely people are to be empathetic and not want to ‘let you down’, so to speak. That said, there’s obviously a degree of professionalism to be maintained, but maybe that would help. (Though like I said before, this is one that you’ve probably been doing since day 1….)
Hopefully there’s something in that ramble that you can use! Sorry for such a long post – I hope you start to get more participants engaging with the study! Best of luck!!