An email arrived in my inbox recently with this subject line: “New X-Funded Research Opportunity—Looking for Caregivers of Persons With X Disease.” Because I’m in the field of health research I opened the email. Otherwise, it’s highly unlikely that I would have.
The email went on to provide a paragraph of information about the research organization and its mission. It then provided a list of eligibility statements—all formulated as “musts”:
- Participants must be
- Participants must have
Then an offer to “read more about the study” and a link which even I, as someone who follows health research, wasn’t compelled to click. What, I wondered, would prompt “caregivers of persons with X disease” to read further? Unfortunately, the language used in this email is all too often the type of language that health researchers use as they attempt to appeal to potential participants in their research efforts. It’s researcher language, not participant language.
Read more at MedCity News.
