Customizable Approaches for Recruiting African Americans on Craigslist: Credibility, Compensation, and Core Social Identity Appeals
Presentation Type
Poster
Keywords
African Americans, recruitment, Craigslist, appeals
Department
Psychology
Abstract
African Americans are underrepresented in research across many disciplines. It is important to identify tools for effectively recruiting African Americans into research to gain important knowledge about the African American experience. Craigslist has proven to be a popular recruitment outlet amongst researchers and is often praised for its free availability and diverse demographic. Our study systematically examines the effectiveness of various approaches to recruiting African Americans using Craigslist. By posting recruitment advertisements with four different titles over a span of six months, we aimed to determine whether different appeals attracted more potential participants and impacted other measures such as the responding participants’ study eligibility and level of follow through with the entire study. In consideration of self-determination theory, social identity theory, and genderlect theory, we hypothesized that a title that referenced credibility (institution name), financial compensation, and racial identity would result in the greatest amount of email responses. Additionally, our second hypothesis was that gender differences would be evident with males being more attracted to advertisement titles that contained credibility and compensation and females responding more to titles containing racial identity. A total of 75 African Americans who were on average 28 years old (SD = 6.26) responded to the advertisements (50.70% female). Overall, the advertisement title with all three elements was the most popular (32.90%), followed by titles only referencing financial compensation (27.60%), racial identity (25.00%), and credibility (14.50%). Chi-square tests of independence revealed no gender differences between the four titles, qualification status, and follow through status.
Faculty Mentor
Nataria Tennille Joseph
Presentation Session
Session C
Start Date
23-4-2021 3:00 PM
End Date
23-4-2021 3:15 PM
Customizable Approaches for Recruiting African Americans on Craigslist: Credibility, Compensation, and Core Social Identity Appeals
African Americans are underrepresented in research across many disciplines. It is important to identify tools for effectively recruiting African Americans into research to gain important knowledge about the African American experience. Craigslist has proven to be a popular recruitment outlet amongst researchers and is often praised for its free availability and diverse demographic. Our study systematically examines the effectiveness of various approaches to recruiting African Americans using Craigslist. By posting recruitment advertisements with four different titles over a span of six months, we aimed to determine whether different appeals attracted more potential participants and impacted other measures such as the responding participants’ study eligibility and level of follow through with the entire study. In consideration of self-determination theory, social identity theory, and genderlect theory, we hypothesized that a title that referenced credibility (institution name), financial compensation, and racial identity would result in the greatest amount of email responses. Additionally, our second hypothesis was that gender differences would be evident with males being more attracted to advertisement titles that contained credibility and compensation and females responding more to titles containing racial identity. A total of 75 African Americans who were on average 28 years old (SD = 6.26) responded to the advertisements (50.70% female). Overall, the advertisement title with all three elements was the most popular (32.90%), followed by titles only referencing financial compensation (27.60%), racial identity (25.00%), and credibility (14.50%). Chi-square tests of independence revealed no gender differences between the four titles, qualification status, and follow through status.