SESSION KEYWORDS: Recruitment, Digital platforms, Covert, Research Ethics Board Collaboration, Ethics review

SESSION ABSTRACT

This case study will outline how researchers and the REB worked collaboratively to apply TCPS 2 principles to access a hard-to-reach study population. A doctoral student and their supervising faculty investigator aimed to investigate the gig work model in the healthcare industry by interviewing personal support workers (PSWs) and health care aids. Little is known about the gig care work model in Canada. As the researchers experienced several challenges in recruiting study participants, an alternative recruitment strategy was proposed. This involved posing online under fictitious pretenses, as a person looking to hire a health care worker on several digital platforms. The proposed recruitment methodology was a novel method to both the research team and the REB. Ethical concerns were identified as well as legal concerns with respect to the platforms’ statements of use. The researchers will discuss how they used the TCPS 2 principles to design the covert recruitment methodology. Staff from the Office of Research Ethics will discuss how the REB members approached the ethical review of the proposed study. REBs and the staff who support them will learn how the researchers and REB members approached the ethical dilemmas they faced around covert recruitment methods.