Research study on social anxiety- need advice from you

Stanford_Anxiety

New member
Dear Members of Social Phobia world,

I'm a research coordinator in the psychology department at Stanford University and I need your advice. My full time job is to recruit participants for a research study on females with social anxiety and our goal is to help improve treatments for mood and anxiety disorders. The study involves computer tasks, being connected to physiological sensors that measure heart rate, sweat gland activity and respiration, as well as questionnaires and an interview. If someone is eligible they come in for 4 sessions that each last at least 2 hours long, and we pay $25/hour each session.

I've been having a REALLY REALLY REALLY hard time finding eligible participants willing to do all these sessions here at Stanford University. We get a good number of responses via our Craigslist ads but people end up not calling us back or not showing up to their appointments. It makes total sense that people don't call us back or show up (we are fully aware of how difficult it is for people suffering from social anxiety) but what can we do to bring more people in?

Are there certain places I can go to advertise for this study? Is the pay rate too low? We can have the same researcher run all sessions with a participant, thus eliminating the need to meet several researchers for all sessions. We've got a grant deadline coming up and we have to have all our participants done so we can write our paper to be published in a scientific journal. If you have any advice for me, I'd be ever so grateful.

Sincerely,
Juliana Gonzales
Research Coordinator
Stanford University- Psychology Department
Gotlib Mood and Axiety Lab
Stanford Mood & Anxiety Disorders Laboratory

Office: 650-721-5077
Email: [email protected]
 

dooby-duck

Well-known member
To be honest a two hour session is probably very daunting to a lot of SA people. Especially in unfamiliar surroundings with new people. Maybe some sort of informal introduction would help to break the ice, and show them what to expect. Maybe they could pick the researcher they wish to work with.
 
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