Building Trust Through Equitable Research Practices
Summary
User research helps you engage the people who will use the service you’re building, increasing the likelihood that you’ll create something that truly meets peoples’ needs. But equitable recruitment—ensuring that you’re engaging users from all walks of life—can be difficult to achieve. Traditional user research practices often exclude people like those who don’t have access to the internet or can’t take time off work, but who might most need to access a service. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution for promoting equitable research, we aim to share inclusive and respectful research practices that foster trust with research participants and government stakeholders. Attendees will gain an understanding of Nava's approach to conducting user research, lessons learned, best practices, and how our work contributes to more equitable access to public services for millions of people and vulnerable populations across the country. Participants will hear examples from Nava's research and walk away with concrete practices they can implement in their work.
Key Insights
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Nava deliberately shifts recruitment focus from a homogenous group to underrepresented communities to ensure equitable user research.
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Building trust with government partners starts early through collaboration on research planning, including co-creating research briefs and interview guides.
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Providing detailed interview guides to stakeholders increases transparency and helps build trust in the research process.
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Remote user research conducted since 2020 offers greater scheduling flexibility and participation diversity but also has limitations.
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Plain language consent forms improve participant understanding and respect during research sessions.
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Active listening and reiterating stakeholder feedback throughout the process prevents misalignment and loss of trust.
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Nava fosters capacity building by enabling government stakeholders to shadow, conduct, and synthesize research themselves for long-term independence.
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Tracking and analyzing diversity metrics across studies on a quarterly basis helps identify recruitment gaps and informs ongoing improvements.
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Recruitment challenges persist for certain groups like Hispanic/Latino origin, older adults, and lower income participants despite varied outreach methods.
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Collaborations with community-based organizations are critical to accessing vulnerable or hard-to-reach populations and supporting non-English speakers.
Notable Quotes
"Bringing our government Partners in early as collaborators and making a clear case for the value of research is one way that we build trust with our stakeholders."
"Every single thing that we would plan to say to the participant is spelled out in this interview guide to build transparency and trust."
"We prioritize speaking with people who are most in need of support so we can better understand and design for all potential users of PFML."
"Since March 2020, we’ve actually conducted all of our interviews remotely, which generally makes scheduling with diverse groups easier."
"Participants can skip any questions they don’t feel comfortable answering; most demographic questions are optional to respect privacy."
"We actively coach Department of PFML staff to shadow and eventually run their own research sessions so they’re empowered long-term."
"We use a participant matrix and assign pseudonyms to protect personally identifiable information throughout research."
"We constantly analyze our recruitment data and note that we still struggle to reach Hispanic or Latino origin individuals, older adults, and lower-income participants."
"Conducting retrospectives on research processes helps us identify bias, recruitment challenges, and improve methodology continuously."
"Being transparent and walking stakeholders through our process creates moments for reflection and keeps the whole team aligned."
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