Negotiating doorstep access: door-to-door survey researchers' strategies to obtain participation

Abstract

This article explores the interactions between researchers and potential respondents when recruiting for a door-to-door survey. Researchers' reflective accounts suggest a range of tactics used to influence potential participation in research that draws upon contrasting identities and roles for researchers and participants. In examining these roles, the paper demonstrates the ways in which, while fleeting, the interactions between researcher and respondents involve impression management strategies and are entangled in negotiations of power and status. In reflecting on some of the practices behind door-step recruiting in survey research, we show how gaining consent to participate is about negotiating researcher and respondent roles. In doing so, we hope to encourage debate about the importance of identity, the ethics of consent and issues of reflexivity in survey-based research.

Keywords:

• survey research
• recruitment
• survey participation
• positionality
• reflective methods
• reflexivity
• researcher role

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the field researchers involved for their insightful reflections.