Call for Participants changes ownership
16 November 2020
Call for Participants has its origins as a winning project in Jisc's 2013 Summer of Student Innovation competition, and, ever since that year, Jisc has been working with the original founders, Martin Kruusimagi and Dan Ratzinger. In 2017, Jisc took the decision to purchase the site and deliver...
Introducing location search
25 January 2019
We are releasing a small update to the study filters. From today, you are able to find interesting research happening nearby. In order to find research happening nearby, navigate to our browse page, open up the study filters and choose the location. You have a choice between three options ...
Introducing Groups and Noticeboards
20 April 2018
Since the beginning of Call for Participants, we have believed that universities play an important role in enabling researchers to best do their work. Today we are officially announcing two of our products that make it even easier for them to do so. Meet the Group and Noticeboard Groups and...
Introducing Commercial Access
10 April 2018
Over the years, many non-academic organisations have approached us asking how they too could get involved with the CfP community and recruit people for their market research trials. We have selectively introduced some of these companies to our platform, but today, we are changing that whole...
Introducing the new Study Page
04 April 2018
Since joining Jisc, the Call for Participants service has undergone some fundamental changes. Today, we are announcing our biggest one yet - the entirely new Study Page. The study page will form part of our new line-up of paid-for products that will form the core of the new CfP product offer....
Do you have what it takes to be the next big thing in EdTech?
15 February 2018
The Call for Participants service is brought to you by Jisc, but it is less known, that the journey between the two began through the Summer of Student Innovation project. Now known as the student ideas competition , this forms part of our EdTech launchpad and its goal is to surface technology...
Social media superstars of 2017
11 January 2018
Call for Participants is a Jisc product and at Jisc, we celebrate all do all we can to make the UK the most advanced research country in the world. Part of that is celebrating all the good things that you, the researchers already do. So why should social media be any different? For this reason,...
Looking after your study just got better
03 January 2018
What you think of our product is the most important thing to us. It drives what we do. Many of you have reached out to us to say the Study Page Overview isn't working quite as well as it should. We are happy to announce an improved Study Page overview page.New Study Overview pageWe have made...
Quick answers to your questions
22 December 2017
Call for Participants has always been about two things: bringing researchers and participants together, and helping both these groups in the world of research participation. Today, we are happy to announce a big leap forward in the latter by releasing our improved Help Centre.Visit the Help...
How do researchers promote their studies?
05 October 2017
Here at Call for Participants, we have always wanted to build features and develop the platform according to our researchers', in other words, your needs. We continuously assess the site anonymously to discover trends and usage patterns and turn these into product updates. This week, we wanted...
Welcome to the Smart Campus
19 September 2017
In case you missed it, James Clay wrote a fascinating article on the Jisc blog exploring the smart campus and what it means. Our environment has become increasingly smarter with products like Google Home and Amazon Echo being introduced to our homes. But what does this shift mean for the...
Case Study - Using CfP as a commercial recruitment company
06 September 2017
Call for Participants (CfP) has always been primarily focused on academia and the majority of researchers using our platform are from universities. Despite that, we have recognised that our product can help more people to conduct research. Since our first year, we are often contacted by...
A researcher’s guide to the galaxy - and the world of data sharing
22 August 2017
Here at Call for Participants, we know very well how research data is the cornerstone of research, which is why we try to make access to human data as easy as possible. But as a researcher, once you have that data, should you share it?That is the question our research and co-design colleagues...
Using CfP as a participant
10 August 2017
Tens of thousands of participants have taken part in research through Call for Participants, and so we wanted to catch up with some of them from across the globe to hear about their experiences on the platform. Anders C from Norway is a psychology enthusiast and when he is not busy spending time...
What do students really want and think?
31 July 2017
A couple of weeks ago on the Jisc blog, Sarah Knight published a fascinating synopsis of research that Jisc has carried out into students’ digital experience with views from 22,593 learners across the UK. This helps universities make better decisions and provide better services. Development of...
Manage your offline research more effectively
08 May 2017
We are pleased to announce that we are now collaborating with WhiteCloud, an online platform that enables researchers to manage various components of human research in a secure and collaborative environment. It’s designed to make study management easier and quicker by empowering researchers...
CFP becomes a part of Jisc
02 May 2017
When we founded Call for Participants over 4 years ago, we made it our goal to bring the exciting world of academic research to a wider audience and give them the opportunity to take part in research studies from universities around the world. In the process, we simplified and made the academic...
New tool for conducting conjoint analysis
20 February 2017
It is great to announce that we are now collaborating with a new service called Conjoint.ly. Conjoint.ly is a platform for discrete choice experimentation: from experimental design, to data collection, to analysis with outputs covering simple partworth utilities to Hierarchical Bayes matrices....
Webinar Part 2 - Recruiting more people
11 May 2016
Learn how to communicate your research more effectively and recruit more participants. A few months ago, we posted part 1 of our webinar series where we taught researchers how to use Call For Participants. This time, we focus on the element of communicating your research and making the most...
University leaderboards
24 March 2016
More and more universities are signing up to our Digital Notice Board product that helps them aggregate research across the institution. We thought this would be a good opportunity to take a quick look under the bonnet of CFP and see how the different universities match up. Here are the...
Mi Mu gloves, BB8, and some Potential.ly really good software - #Digifest16
16 March 2016
If you couldn't attend this years Digifest, you missed an opportunity to interact with and test some of the most innovative and playful educational tech on the market - plus a chance to see a performance by Chagall wearing a pair of Mi Mu gloves Jisc's opening video for DigiFest '16 After...
Webinar Part 1 - How to use Call For Participants as a researcher
08 March 2016
Over the last month, we ran several webinars on communicating your research, how to increase the number of participants that take part in your research, and how to best target participant communities using social media. In case you missed those, you can now catch all of these online. Part 1...
Participants 101 - Part 4 - The other side
03 March 2016
In our final part of this series on what taking part in research is and how to do it, we are taking a behind the scenes look at the life of scientists and what it means to conduct a research study. This will give you an idea of where your participation fits in with the wider research study....
Researching in the land down under
26 February 2016
Over the last few months we have seen more growth from Australian universities and so we decided to catch up with some of the researchers from the land down under to see how they are doing and why Call for Participants has worked for them.Web traffic from different Australian cities Some of our...
Participants 101 - Part 3 - Ethics
17 February 2016
This time on Participants 101 we are going a bit deeper into understanding academic research and looking at the role of ethics and what it means to conduct ethical research, as well as ethics approval procedure. This gets you inside the mind of the researcher to understand their concerns and...
Come join us at Digifest 2016
09 February 2016
At the beginning of March, we will be showcasing at Digifest 2016, Jisc's annual conference focused on all digital aspects of academia and education. The event is FREE and aimed at all middle or senior managers in an academic, curriculum, organisational support or technical role, in a UK higher...
2015 in review
04 February 2016
2015 was a fun year for Call for Participants. We introduced many new features and reached several milestones on our journey to bringing academic research to the world. Let's take a quick look back at what we did and take a look at what to expect from 2016.Key events in 2015One of the biggest...
Free Webinar - Recruiting participants
27 January 2016
We are hosting a series of webinars for both early and late stage researchers who are looking to recruit human participants for their research. Grab this opportunity to find out how you can use Call For Participants for free to help you promote you research study and recruit participants....
It's a one-stop-poster-shop
19 January 2016
Call for Participants is all about saving researchers time and money. Today, we take a huge leap forward in that by officially introducing our poster feature, which allows anybody to create and print a beautiful participant recruitment poster with a single click. Every day, we all have to do...
New resource to help researchers recruit participants
13 January 2016
We are on a mission to provide researchers with the best possible resources and support for recruiting participants. A few weeks back we released a new exciting feature on this journey and today we take a big step forward by offering official enhanced support and live chat. What does this mean...
Participants 101 - Part 2 - What is taking part in research?
07 January 2016
In our previous blog post, we explored the reasons why you would take part in research and saw that taking part can be emotionally, financially, and intelectually rewarding. Today, we are looking at what taking part means and what can you expect. What is 'taking part'? Imagine, if you will,...
Opportunities for EdTech lie in the cogs
30 December 2015
A while back we ran went to the Dublin Web Summit and wrote an article on the state of EdTech as we saw it there, in the context of the European startup ecology. A few weeks ago, I stumbled on this an article by Lucy Boyd in TechCrunch where she discusses the focus of the EdTech sector and how...
Pinterest & Reddit play nice with CFP
17 December 2015
Recently we updated our platform with two new social media integrations - Reddit and Pinterest. We believe these tools will allow researchers to discover new audiences and for participants to enjoy great content the way they are used to. Below we show two ways how we see these platforms...
Treat yourself this Christmas
08 December 2015
Regardless of if we like it or not, holidays can be a stressful time, there is always so much to do. Whether you need to buy gifts, finish that last thing at work, or tidy your house for guests. We all deserve a little reward for all our hard work. So why not treat yourself this Christmas?...
Participants 101 - Part 1 - Why take part in research?
02 December 2015
There are many reasons to get involved with academic research. Today we are going to take a look at a few as Part 1 of our new Participants 101 series. This series of posts is aimed at anybody new to taking part in research as a participant and we will be covering a range of topics from ethics...
Case Study - using Call for Participants as a researcher
25 November 2015
Conducting a research study with human participants is a long process full of challenges and successes. At Call for Participants, we try to understand these to see where and how we can help. Last week we caught up with Dr Ian A Clark, a postdoctoral research associate from University College...
CFP at Web Summit
17 November 2015
Last week the CFP team flew out to Dublin, Ireland, not with a mission to do research into the finer detail of the Dublin pub culture, or to explore the birthplace of James Joyce, but rather to bring academic research to the world. We were invited to showcase at this year's Dublin Web Summit as...
UK Universities, your researchers need your help!
09 November 2015
The research happening at the universities has gained a lot of public exposure this year, however more exposure is needed to help researchers recruit the right participants. Researchers from over 120 universities in the UK are conducting research involving humans. Participants can then be...
The importance of being an open researcher
27 October 2015
Open research may be a familiar topic to many academics, but unfamiliar territory to some researchers, especially new postgraduate students. Therefore in response to the launch of Vitae’s open research theme, we talk to two open research advocates who are helping academics connect and access...
Web Summit: Come meet us in Dublin
14 October 2015
We are delighted to announce that we have been invited to the Dublin Web Summit to exhibit as part of Web Summit Alpha - the early-stage startup programme.Since its start in 2010, the Web Summit has grown to become the largest internet startup conference in Europe and one of the largest in the...
Does the classroom hinder learning?
01 September 2015
A couple of weeks ago we posted a blog post about life-long learning and the growing availability of online learning resources. I stumbled on this Ted talk by Daphne Koller and while a lot of what she covered re-iterated some of the themes from that blog post, two items struck a cord:This is a...
New tool in your promoting back-pocket
05 August 2015
Here at Call for Participants we love new tech and bringing it to the academic community. It gives us great pleasure to announce that we have a small update to our Twitter promotion tool that we are sure you will love.Our promotion tool now supports Twitter Cards. What are Twitter cards you ask?...
Welcome Russell Group
14 July 2015
It has been a while since we last brought any usage milestones to our users and we figured it is really time to do that. Last month we launched our refreshed website and it was a success. In the following weeks we saw an increase in usage and great feedback from our users. The end of Master's...
Golden age of lifelong learning?
07 July 2015
Recently, I stumbled on this article great article by Tim Brown, one of my favourite design thinkers, to give you a sample:Adam is a creative soul. He’s well-read, plays music, cooks elaborate meals, and is highly engaged in arts and culture. He’s an engineer by training, and has worked in...
Research that makes you laugh & think
28 June 2015
Here at call for participants, we see a lot of different research from all disciplines and fields of life. Often, these research studies look into very serious matters that life-changing. At other times, the are just as life changing, but also bring a smile on our faces and we can't wait to tell...
CFP gets slim for summer!
26 May 2015
We are pleased to announce an update to the Call for Participants platform. With this version, our goal was to re-think the user experience of the site and make it easier than ever for potential participants to use the service. There is a large number of adjustments to the site throughout and we...
What is the true cost of recruiting a participant?
01 January 2015
When calculating the cost of recruiting participants for your research study it’s easy to just focus on the financial outlay but your time is also a valuable asset that needs to be spent wisely. Here we discuss the balance between your time and money when recruiting, and maximising the societal...
How to maximise your recruitment this Christmas
08 December 2014
The end of term doesn't have to mean a halt to your participant recruitment efforts. Take advantage of one of the best recruitment opportunities in the academic calendar and maximise your efforts this Christmas to get the participants you need.Why Christmas?While many participants and...
How to attract more participants in three easy steps!
25 November 2014
Finding the right participants for your study can be challenging and time consuming so you need to make it as easy for them to take part as possible when you do. Here are three tips to help you get a better response from participants:1. Use appropriate languageParticipants can be easily put-off...
Sometimes all it takes is thank-you!
20 November 2014
We’ve recently reviewed the rewards shared by the research participant community in 2014, and found that despite iPads, cash and gift vouchers being on offer, the most popular reward was in fact a simple “thank-you!” More than half of the people that offered up their valuable time, thoughts and...
Inside knowledge: What do participants really want?
11 November 2014
It can often feel like the only way to boost your participation rates and achieve a good sample size is to offer financial incentives to participants, and when you are on a tight budget this isn’t always possible. The good news is that our active community of participants regularly take part in...
How does Call For Participants help connect universities and the public?
01 September 2014