The Recruitment Program provides expertise and support for labs to recruit specific populations including typically developing children and adults and who have or have concerns of hearing loss, hard of hearing (HoH), or hearing aids, gochlear Implants, developmental language disorder (DLD), down syndrome and more.

The primary goals of the program are to:

1. Promote best practices and meet the needs of investigators by facilitating multi-lab recruitment and maintaining and updating the RAD volunteer registry.

2. Increase the number of individuals from specialized populations within the recruitment database.

3. Increase clinician participation in the Research Champions Network.

Centralized and Coordinated Multi-Lab Recruitment

We facilitate coordinated recruitment of participants who are eligible for multiple research studies. Coordinated recruitment encourages transparency in communication and scheduling between labs to maximize resources for labs and help participants have a good experience during their research participation.

Recruitment Planning

We maintain a list of all ongoing studies, their participant samples, and timelines for data collection. This gives us a good idea of upcoming researcher needs and helps us evaluate whether our current efforts will be sufficient in providing participants or if we need to recruit additional participants. The list also facilitates coordinated recruitment across labs and across siblings within a family. We consult with research labs on best practices and ways to increase recruitment and participant engagement.

Research Participant Registry (RAD)

The Participant Registry (RAD) is Boys Town’s research volunteer registry custom-built for researchers to recruit participants who are typically developing or who have a hearing, balance, speech, or language concern. The RAD registry has over 15,000 potential participants with new names added regularly.