Community Activist Screener Survey Recruitment

[bradyse]

Dependencies

Recruitment/outreach of community advocate and expanding the database #193

Overview

We need to continue the recruitment for the Community Activist Persona screener survey so that we can interview users who are community activists.

Action Items

• Using Initial Contacts Spreadsheet, email individuals who were formerly contacted via LinkedIn, as well as individuals who were initially contacted.
• Expand Community Activist Survey Recruitment Recruitment/outreach of community advocate and expanding the database #193
• Update Initial Contacts Spreadsheet with new leads.
• Request @ExperimentsInHonesty to at-channel individuals via Hack for LA: Recruitment Message.
• Monitor ATD email account to ensure that all contact responses have received a follow-up email reply.
• Create new issue for Create Interview Script for Community Activists Create Interview Script for Community Activists #197
• Investigate social media platforms to post Recruitment Message.

Resources/Instructions

• Email Template for Screener Survey
• Wiki- Research: Community Activist
• Issue #147: Persona 1 Recruitment Strategy (closed issue originally made by Kim T.)
• Initial Contacts Spreadsheet

[bradyse]

At-Channel Recruitment Message

Are you a Community Activist? Access the Data 📊 team is looking for community-minded people to interview and connect with to learn more about accessibility to city data. ✍🏿 This 2-minute Screener Survey will be used to gain insights for building out an easy-to-navigate website of LA's open data resources. 🏙 Information from this screener will be used internally and anonymously. Thank you for your participation! 😎😄

[bradyse]

Email Template with Screener Survey

Hi (Contact Name),

I’m (HfLA Name), a member of Hack for LA’s Access the Data research team. Our goal with the Access the Data project is to help people make data-driven decisions that impact government policies by partnering with community activists and by providing free and open-source educational content about using city-wide data. We want to make sure that we design something that community activists in LA will actually find useful and actionable.

With these project goals in mind, I’m reaching out to ask you if you’d be willing to complete a 2-minute Screener Survey that will be used solely for our research. This short survey will help us in finding community members to talk to and gain insights for building an easy-to-navigate website of LA's open data resources. If you are interested, the link to our survey is below.

Link to Survey

Thank you for your time,

(insert email signature)
Email Signature- Use Second One

[bradyse]

2022.06.20 Update

@joycekyang emailed several community activists from spreadsheet.
Created #193 to better target HfLA projects that are involved with Citizen Engagement.

[bradyse]

@joycekyang @mmelovega @hannahsgr @Aparna1Gopal

Updates

• I reached out on Slack to some HfLA Community Engagement PMs to see if they had any contact leads (see Recruitment/outreach of community advocate and expanding the database #193).
• I created a folder in the Google Drive specifically for emails.
• I used a template Melissa had shared last year and rewrote it for ATD: see this Screener Survey Email Template.

Questions

• Do you think that this revised email template would be helpful? We could still add a paragraph at the beginning to contextualize and personalize it.
• Should we send an email to the EmpowerLA Councils to request support in finding people to contact and share our screener survey with?

[joycekyang]

I think this updated version is definitely more personable and do think it is helpful. (I think one thing that we could also add is something along the lines of "I noticed that you are apart of _____ project/organization" because it might help give the impression that what we are going to be talking about, relates to their work!

[bradyse]

Thanks, @joycekyang . I updated the template so that the first line is more personable:

We noticed that you are a part of [PROJECT/ORGANIZATION], and we wanted to let you know about an opportunity to support your work in [ADVOCACY TOPIC].

Hopefully this will be a painless revision. I sent out an email to EmpowerLA Councils. We'll see what I get back.

I also added the signature to the Gmail account as a default. I made the name "Access the Data Team" and the role "Hack for LA" but you could easily edit that with your name in the top line and role in the second line.

[bradyse]

@mmelovega @joycekyang @Aparna1Gopal @hannahsgr

Updates as of 2022-07-07:

• Sent email to EmpowerLA using the newly revised recruitment email message.
• Sent email to I.L. (AJ's friend) to request completion of the survey and also copied recruitment email.
• Updated contact list spreadsheet.
• Keep checking ATD gmail account to see if anyone responds.
• Create interview script. - anyone interested in doing this in anticipation of interviewing AJ's friend?

Comments

• Still only one response to our screener survey (C.R. who was already interviewed--twice!).
• AJ mentioned that I.L. was interested in completing the survey and being interviewed. I.L. is traveling the last week of July, though.
• I noticed that the Data Expert persona team posted their screener survey on Twitter. Who has access to Twitter and can we get this set up somehow?
• If the EmpowerLA people don't monitor their email, perhaps they'll respond on social media. If they could retweet our recruitment message, that would be fabulous.
• Bonnie still seems to be too busy with the internship to @ channel our recruitment message, but if anyone has a chance to get her to do this, please redirect her to copy/paste the message here.

[mxajPrice]

@KC243 can reach out to contacts in NY. @mmelovega to send Kevin the survey template.

[Aparna1Gopal]

Notes:
@Aparna1Gopal
Currently following this recruitment strategy from my end:

• Posting the Screener message on external Slack channels
  • HfLA: # general
  • HfLA: # citizen-engagement
  • HfLA: # admin
  • HfLA: # new-joiner-orientation

[Clarified from UX Lead (Mariana V) and Community Activist Persona Lead (Sara B) via Slack. Can post on external slack channels. Research participants can be from Los Angeles, United States and/or International. Due to this non-specificity, and/all Slack channels can be targeted)

• Contacting a mutual friend who works in social work for a non-profit to see they are willing to be interviewed
• Shared a resource to the team via Slack. The resource has a list of non-profits in the Los Angeles area working with community activists. This may help with outreach and recruitment https://www.libertyhill.org/organizations/

[bradyse]

• Received reply from an email that Kim sent back in April.
• Sent response and link to screener survey to Claire. update: she said she responded to the survey but it didn't come through
• Thank you @Aparna1Gopal for monitoring the Gmail account.

[Aparna1Gopal]

Notes
Currently following this recruitment strategy from my end:

#184 (comment)

Based on the above message, following are the updates:

• Have contacted the mutual friend in social work, they donot wish to be interviewed. Need to look at other resources/networks for recruiting and outreach.

• Posted the Screener message on external Slack channels

• UX Rescue

• Hexagon UX

• Design_Thinktanks

• Using the following short version of the recruitment message to hopefully grab more eyeballs

Shorter version:
#184 (comment)

Are you a Community Activist? Access the Data 📊 team is looking for community-minded people to interview and connect with to learn more about accessibility to city data. ✍🏿 This 2-minute Screener Survey will be used to gain insights for building out an easy-to-navigate website of LA's open data resources. 🏙 Information from this screener will be used internally and anonymously. Thank you for your participation! 😎😄

(OR)
Longer version
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IXu9rG2X-5Jx01zxp6MuSpZwQzJ09HYMvgdQGA-2hXQ/edit

[Aparna1Gopal]

Notes:

• Outreach to prospective research participant at Active San Gabriel Valley (ActiveSGV) https://www.activesgv.org/about#mission via email.

• Used the following email template:

Subject: 📊 Hack for LA wants to help community activists access the data 📊

Email template recorded here: Under Screener Survey Recruitment Message (Sent on August 15, 2022)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IXu9rG2X-5Jx01zxp6MuSpZwQzJ09HYMvgdQGA-2hXQ/edit

[Aparna1Gopal]

Notes

• Added Dependencies Recruitment/outreach of community advocate and expanding the database #193 to this issue, since both issues are inter-connected and overlap at this point.

• This issue is complete and is also currently being tracked in Recruitment/outreach of community advocate and expanding the database #193

[Aparna1Gopal]

@lrchang2 @mxajPrice @bkong

• This issue can be closed

• This issue is complete and is also currently being tracked in Recruitment/outreach of community advocate and expanding the database #193

CC: @mmelovega @hannahsgr @Aparna1Gopal

[Aparna1Gopal]

Notes:

Based on meeting with PM Lucy C on October 13, 2022 this is being closed.
This issue is complete and is also currently being tracked in #193

• The project is currently pivoting in a new direction based on the current requirements of Access the Data. This includes ATD’s Website redesign based on CKAN incorporation and pivoting from the prior education modules model

• The personas (data expert and community activist) were developed during the education modules iteration of the project. The idea of creating a database of a research participant pool of data experts and community activists were also formulated during this stage of the project.

• UX Researchers (prior & current) working on this issue have utilized multiple methods for outreach and recruiting research participants: including internal HfLA Slack, external Slack groups, Twitter, Email, cold calling etc. with links to Calendly for interview sign-up

• UX Researchers (prior & current) working on this issue have also expanded the database of potential community advocates & data experts over the course of 6+ months.

• With the current restructuring of the team and the vision for the ATD website moving forward, LinkedIn poll is being used as a new strategy for participant recruitment Create a poll for LinkedIn #229. This will also be used as a strategy to conduct new generative research to identify other persona types who will be potential users of ATD website & CKAN.

• The important details from this issue will be transferred to ATD’s Wiki by the PMs.