Savvy Participants Posted on January 16, 2008 Darrell P. Wheeler (bio) describes why community members might seek participation in a study where they don't fit the selection criteria.

One of the challenges with doing research within certain communities, people have gotten savvy smart. We've researched underprivileged, disadvantaged communities for so long. When they see a flier or hear about a research project, they become whoever you need them to be to get in the door to do that research.

We had people showing up at our African-American site who you could tell English was not their first language, and there was nothing visible about them that looked like they were African-American. But they said, "I'm black," because somebody told them that's how you get into the study. And we had to turn people away. We had to have screeners there.

Some of the men we work with are unemployed and by many indicators unemployable: no high school or high school equivalent, no job training, incarceration record, active substance use, health concerns, poor socialization to a work environment. You know, ten things against them. These men are just not really employable in the immediate.

So any compensation is great compensation for them. And the struggle is how do we find that right balance? And so this goes to our discussion about labels. I have found that if we sit with men and you actually again listen, engage in a compelling, organic discussion, you are going to find yourself privy to more elaborate and intricate descriptions of their sexual lives than if you ever go out and say, "I'm looking for men who have sex with men."

If I just go out and get a group of 15 black men together, and we have a discussion, in the course of that discussion stuff will come up that never could've been predicted if we had cast a narrow label.

And so again, it's about knowing the community. It's about developing rapport and trust. It's about good social work practice in that experience, being able to be a solid practitioner in the group dynamic, and to create an atmosphere of safety. And it allows people to open up.

That label? People are savvy. They'll be any label I want. They'll answer my surveys any way I want, and the researcher is satisfied because they got 600 surveys. Well, those could all be lies.

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