Recruitment materials the Walden IRB approves: flyers, emails, scripts, exactly as they will run
The Walden IRB does not approve your intention to recruit; it approves the words. Walden's handbook requires the ethics application to describe how participants will be recruited and selected — including any advertisements, recruitment letters or scripts, and any remuneration offered — and the board reads those materials the way a prospective participant will: verbatim, out of context, with no one standing by to clarify. A summary of what the flyer will roughly say is not a flyer. The single most reliable way to shorten the correspondence is to enclose every recruitment document exactly as it will run, each as its own attachment, before the board has to ask.
Walden's IRB reviews recruitment materials verbatim: every flyer, email, phone or in-person script, and social post, exactly as participants will encounter it. Each must match the consent document, promise nothing beyond it, and stay unused until the approval letter exists.
Why does the board insist on the exact words?
Because recruitment is where consent begins — not as a metaphor, but as federal guidance. OHRP treats consent as starting with the investigator's first approach — flyer, brochure, or advertisement included — and its recruitment guidance calls such materials the earliest components of informed consent. A person's understanding of your study is formed by the first document they see, and that document is almost never the consent form — it is the flyer on the break-room board, the email in the inbox, the two sentences a colleague reads aloud. The federal criteria Walden's board applies were written with this in mind: 45 CFR 46.111 requires the board to find that selection of participants is equitable and to stay, in the regulation's words, "particularly cognizant" of people vulnerable to pressure or undue influence. The board cannot judge tone, pressure, or promises from a paraphrase. It can only judge the words that will actually run — which is why Walden's application asks for the materials themselves, not a description of them.
There is a simpler reason too: recruitment happens in the open, unsupervised. Once a flyer is posted, no one from the board is in the room. The review is the board's only chance to catch the sentence that overpromises, so the review happens on the final wording; wording the board has not read is wording it has not approved.
Which materials count as recruitment materials?
Everything a prospective participant could encounter before they hold the consent document. In a typical Walden capstone or doctoral study, the list runs longer than expected:
- Flyers and posters — laid out as it will print, tear-off tabs included.
- Emails and letters of invitation — the full text, subject line included, and the follow-up or reminder message if one will be sent; a reminder is a second contact and is reviewed like the first.
- Scripts — what you will say when you call, when you announce the study at a staff meeting, when a manager introduces you. If someone else will speak for the study — a site contact forwarding your email, a colleague reading an announcement — the words they use are also recruitment and go in the file.
- Social media and listserv posts — the post text itself, per platform, plus where it will appear. Whether a given platform or group is an acceptable channel for your design is a question for Walden's current handbook and IRB portal; the material still goes in verbatim.
- Snowball and word-of-mouth language — if participants will be invited to pass the study along, the text they pass along is a recruitment document too.
- Screening questions — whatever you will ask to decide who is eligible, a person answering screening questions is already inside the study.
The test is simple: if a set of words does work in finding, informing, or persuading a participant, the board reads those words. Where the channel involves a partner organization's board, list, or premises, the site's permission has to say so — which is one of the things the letter of cooperation exists to establish.
What must each material say — and not say?
A recruitment document is a preview of the consent document, never an advance on it. Walden's application requires the consent process to establish that participation is voluntary, that a participant may opt out without penalty, and how concerns reach the researcher; nothing in a flyer or script may cut against any of that. In practice the board reads each material for a short list of jobs:
| Element | What it must do | The failure the board flags |
|---|---|---|
| Identification of the study and the researcher | Say who is asking, plainly, and that this is research | An invitation that reads as a workplace directive or a service announcement |
| Purpose, in one or two plain sentences | Match the purpose stated in the application and consent document | A friendlier, vaguer purpose than the file states — drift the board reads instantly |
| What participation involves | Name the activity and the ask (an interview, a survey) as the consent document does | Understating the ask to improve uptake |
| Voluntariness | Leave no doubt the decision is free, especially where the audience reports to anyone connected to the study | Language that leans — "we hope all staff will take part" |
| Any remuneration | State exactly what is offered, as the application discloses it | A thank-you gift that appears in the flyer but not the application, or reads as an inducement |
| Contact and next step | Route the interested person to you and the consent process | Collecting responses or answers before consent exists |
| Confidentiality claims | Claim only what the data security plan can honor | "Completely anonymous" on a flyer for an interview study that records voices |
Most of these failures are agreement failures. The flyer, the consent document, the application, and the data security plan are read as one file; a recruitment page that promises anonymity a study cannot deliver, or omits remuneration the application discloses, is a contradiction, and contradictions come back.
What changes when you are recruiting where you work?
Most Walden capstones recruit inside a building the researcher already belongs to, and the board reads workplace recruitment with the coercion question open on its desk. The material itself carries most of the risk: an email from your own address to people you supervise is pressure whatever the words say. The usual answers are structural — the invitation goes out under a neutral channel or a site contact rather than from your authority; the script says plainly that taking part or declining is invisible to you where that is the design; screening avoids putting anyone in the position of declining to your face. Walden's application has put the question bluntly enough to answer with a checkbox: whether you will be specifically recruiting your own subordinates, or whether your recruitment method automatically excludes them — and Walden's own guidance names the professional-role pressure directly: a manager recruiting the people they manage. The board will also expect your dual-role arrangements in the application itself, and the site's letter to authorize the channel being used — the reading we run on the plan before any material is drafted. Where the audience would come through Walden's own participant pool, the application historically carries an option for that, with the IRB seeking the pool's approval on the researcher's behalf; the current portal's wording governs.
When may recruitment actually begin?
When the approval letter exists, and not before. Walden's published policy is categorical: no data collection of any kind may commence until the IRB has approved the study, and Walden's application materials have said the same of recruitment itself — consent signatures may not be gathered before approval, and work that jumps the line does not qualify for academic credit. A flyer posted "just to gauge interest," a listserv message sent while the application is under review, a colleague asked to mention the study at a meeting — each is recruitment before approval, and each can put the material, the participants it reached, and the study itself in question. The sequence, and where the line falls, is drawn in the process, step by step.
The same gate applies after approval, in miniature: the approved materials are the materials. Rewording a flyer, adding a reminder email, or opening a new channel after approval is a change to the file, and it returns to the board as an amendment before running — usually a small letter, but a letter.
How do you enclose recruitment materials so the board can approve them?
One document per material, each final, each labeled for the channel it will run in. The board should be able to lift your flyer out of the file and pin it to a wall. A workable set for a workplace interview study: the flyer as it will print; the invitation email with subject line; the reminder email; the script for the staff-meeting announcement; the screening questions. Each one consistent with the consent document, each one named in the application's recruitment description, and each channel matched to what the site's letter permits. Build that set once, before filing, and the board's recruitment questions mostly have nowhere to land. Walden's own guidance lists errors in participant-facing materials among the common causes of a delayed ethics approval — the flyer is participant-facing from the day it is drafted, and the board reads it that way. The assembly order for the full enclosure set is in the application checklist.
What to do next
Gather every set of words a participant could meet before the consent form — flyer, emails, scripts, posts, screening — and read each against the consent document for drift, pressure, and promises. If you would rather have the whole set read as the board will read it, write to the desk: we review what you have, recruitment included, and the review is free.
Sources
- Walden University handbook — Doctoral Learning and Resources (IRB; required application content, including advertisements, recruitment letters or scripts, and remuneration): academics.waldenu.edu/handbook/learning-modalities/doctoral-research-resources
- Walden University — Research Ethics Review Process (Office of Research and Doctoral Services; sign-in may be required): academicguides.waldenu.edu/research-center/research-ethics/review-process
- 45 CFR 46.111 — the criteria a board must satisfy, equitable selection and undue-influence vigilance among them: Cornell LII, 45 CFR 46.111
- 45 CFR 46.116 — on informed consent, whose process recruitment begins: Cornell LII, 45 CFR 46.116
- Walden University Quick Answers — common causes of delayed ethics approval (participant-facing materials; professional-role pressure): academicanswers.waldenu.edu/faq/343947
- OHRP — Informed Consent FAQs (the consent process begins with the first approach, flyer or advertisement included): hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/guidance/faq/informed-consent
- OHRP — Guidance on IRB Review of Clinical Trial Websites (recruitment as the earliest component of consent): hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/guidance/clinical-trial-websites