An Honest Discussion About Ghosting

It’s the first day of interviewing for your new project. You have the perfect research plan that you and your stakeholders are all aligned on. You’ve read up on these tips so you know your interviews are going to get the. Best. Insights. Ever. You have recruited more than enough participants and now it's time for the first remote session.

11:01 — “Oh, the participant should be logging to [insert remote meeting platform] any second now.”

11:02 — “Yeah, I’ll just give Firstname Lastname a few more minutes.”

11:03 — “Hmmm, I wonder if they got confused with the [insert remote meeting platform] instructions.”

11:04 — “Well, I’ll call them 5 minutes after. Maybe they just got busy and forgot.”

11:05 — “No answer. Hmm, well I’ll send a reminder email.”

11:06 — “I don’t understand. They accepted the meeting invite.”

11:07 — “Oh I got an email. Oh it’s the weekly newsletter.”

11:08 — “They definitely confirmed”

11:09 — “Am I really about to get ghosted?”

11:10 —

Actual footage of me waiting for the participant

Listen, as researchers, we understand that things come up at the last minute. We understand that people change their mind. We understand that some time has passed since we made these plans and people forget. But man, when you’ve been ghosted by three different users in one day, you may find yourself having a Carrie Bradshaw moment.

I couldn’t help but wonder…is it me? Am I picking the wrong respondents? Did they look me up on LinkedIn and decide that they were no longer interested in speaking with me? Or have the ghost of my ghosting past come home to roost.

That may be a little dramatic, but ghosting can negatively impact research. When recruiting participants for research, we are often looking for certain demographics. The reality is, even when you over recruit and do all the things “they say” you should do, you could find yourself scrambling last minute to find similar types of participants.

The Experience Research team here at Verizon Connect has created a “Ghost Counter” to keep track of the number of times we have been ghosted, but to also make light of something that can be a little stressful. Some of the ghost designs are related to the particulars of the participant.

This one ghosted the reschedule for the initial ghost

This sleepy ghost occurred at 8:00 am

Once we started tracking the ghosts, we noticed we have other types of participants that aren’t ghosts, but they are something.

A goblin is a participant that “gamed” the screener, but is ultimately not the type of participant that we were looking for.

The gremlin is a participant that has no intentions of participating in the session. They say the [insert remote meeting platform] isn’t working, or that it’s too complicated, and then they stop responding to emails.

At the end of the day, there are tons of articles about how to reduce respondent no-shows, but sometimes you’re just gonna get ghosted. Try keeping a ghost counter for your team. While it may not get respondents to stop ghosting, it may help soften the blow.

Written by Marlana Coignet

Marlana is a UX Researcher for Verizon Connect, specializing in surveys and other mixed method research. The self-proclaimed Costco Queen spends her free time in Costco, talking about Costco, or eating something she bought… at Costco.