Posted November 26, 2024 by Ashley Washburn
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is a participating institution with ResearchMatch, an online volunteer registry and platform for recruiting participants for clinical research studies. Nebraska researchers who lead projects with health-related outcomes are encouraged to consider leveraging this resource to identify potential research participants outside of the usual care settings.
ResearchMatch is a free, secure resource that is funded in part by the National Institutes of Health-National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Additional information for Nebraska researchers is available on the Methodology and Evaluation Research Core’s website.
Established in 2010, ResearchMatch connects research teams with people who are interested in learning about research studies. Researchers can register Institutional Review Board-approved studies, search for de-identified volunteers and communicate with potential volunteers. Using ResearchMatch’s filters, researchers can create a cohort of individuals who meet some of the study’s key inclusion and exclusion criteria and send an IRB-approved message to potential volunteers via ResearchMatch.
On the volunteer side, interested participants create a profile with basic health information, which allows researchers to search for individuals who meet certain study criteria. Potential participants can choose whether to provide their contact information to the researcher. Contact information for interested individuals who are willing to be contacted appears on the researcher’s ResearchMatch dashboard.
Before using ResearchMatch, researchers must complete the registration process. Following registration, they can either conduct a feasibility study to gauge how many registered volunteers meet their study’s criteria or obtain IRB approval to use ResearchMatch for recruitment.
A Spanish translation version of ResearchMatch is also available. Once researchers receive IRB approval to use ResearchMatch for recruitment, they can send volunteers an IRB-approved contact message in Spanish. Frequently asked questions and more information are available at ResearchMatch, the MERC information page or by emailing researchmatch@unl.edu.
