Hiring Frontline People Posted on July 24, 2007 Matching ethnicity and age of research assistants and the study population can work well, states Christopher L. Edwards (bio).

A research assistant and/or the frontline people are often very much more important than the researcher behind that assistant. That is, we often look for a strong match between the research assistant and the population that we’re trying to serve. For example, if we’re recruiting for a study and it’s a disease that specifically affects women, black women at that, we often look for a black woman researcher.

Not only that, we try to do age matching. For example, if we are recruiting for a study on Alzheimer’s disease, we want a research assistant who has, in fact, some skill level to interact with that population, maybe middle aged themselves, maybe has a disease process that makes them more sensitive to the idea of chronic pain or chronic issues or chronic illness.

We really do want there to be a real match between the research assistant and the population that we’re trying to serve. We think that is often very, very important in terms of making a connection to the population.

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