Project overview

The Online Grocery Shopping (OGS) trial – Understanding how Australians shop for groceries online. Researchers from the George Institute for Global Health asked for our assistance in recruiting people for The OGS trial. With increasing numbers of Australians shopping for groceries online, this trial aimed to understand how people conduct their online grocery shopping, and how their purchasing habits might be affected by the information available at these online stores.

We spoke with Michelle Reading (Project Manager), Academic Project Operations Food Policy Programs at The George Institute for Global Health NSW Australia to discuss how our recruitment service worked for their trial.

What were you trying to achieve? 

We were working on an online grocery shopping study looking at hypertension. The design is simple to understand. We had two groups, both receiving shopping vouchers. But the intervention group also got a browser extension on their computer. This was designed to monitor their online shopping and make suggestions when they were choosing products. For instance, we were looking at people with hypertension and their sodium intake. They might pick bacon for example (obviously high in sodium) and the intervention would pop up and say, “This is very high in salt. You should avoid these products completely, but if you do insist on having this product, maybe pick a healthy alternative from below.”

Then they might be shown between one and three different products with lower sodium content. The principle was that they would opt for these products and, over time, we'd see a change in their sodium consumption. Later improving their blood pressure. We were trying to reach a larger population within the demographics of the study. To find people we would never have reached otherwise. Our original goal was 2000 participants, but we realized we were never going to achieve that, because of the exclusion criteria. We re-evaluated and understood that we would have to screen vast numbers of people across Australia. It just wasn’t feasible. That was when I reached out to nativve.

How did the project work? 

When I first spoke with nativve, I gave them our eligibility criteria. From that they produced some advertising that they could use in social media and they also created a kind of pre-screening questionnaire. In effect, when participants see the advert, they can click on it and it diverts them to the webpage where they answer some questions. Anyone who passes that screening is then forwarded on to the research team as a contact for the future. Really quickly we started to see positive results.

What do you like about nativve’s method?

I liked their approach. It’s really similar to how I work. Really, really honest, transparent, upfront & friendly. What-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of professional as well. They are a really nice bunch to deal with and I always felt like they would go above and beyond for me. For example, if I needed to tweak things, they were always there to offer assistance. And considering it’s international and our time difference is challenging, that was really good. I’m in Australia, but I always knew that they would come back to me quickly. So when I got up in the morning, there would be emails there from them waiting. Even the other side of the world didn't really make much of a difference to be honest. And it was also nice to have a friendly, familiar accent as well. Compared to other companies I have worked with, they were much more approachable. You can tell it is a smaller business that actually cares, as opposed to this huge organization that has so many entities here, there and everywhere internationally. The difference is incredible.

Would you like to learn how we can help with your recruitment? Get in touch with us to discuss.