Recruitment materials for a Chamberlain project: what each board wants to see, word for word
Recruitment material is the first thing a participant ever reads about your project, which is why boards treat it as part of the consent conversation rather than as marketing. Chamberlain is unusually specific here: it publishes a flyer template that sets out, in three lists, what an invitation must contain, what it ought to contain, and what will never be allowed on it. The practicum site then adds rules of its own about where paper may go.
Build the invitation on Chamberlain's flyer template, carry every required item, avoid the forbidden ones, and clear posting with the facility. Both boards approve the exact version that goes up, and only that version may be used.
Why do boards review a flyer at all?
Because an invitation does the same work a consent form does, earlier and with less protection around it. Someone reads a poster in a break room and forms a first impression of what is being offered, what it might be worth, and whether declining is safe. If that impression is wrong, no amount of careful wording in the consent form later repairs it — the person has already decided.
So both bodies read the page as a disclosure document. Chamberlain's list of materials to accompany an application for initial review, where applicable, includes recruitment letters, notices, emails, or other materials — every channel, not just the printed poster. The facility's council reads the same page for a second set of concerns: whether your notice will appear in its corridors, whether staff will feel pressured by an invitation from a colleague, and whether anything on it conflicts with its own communications rules.
What does Chamberlain's own template require?
Chamberlain publishes a recruitment flyer template covering printed material that invites people to take part in a scholarly project. It states that any representative of the institution must use the accompanying template when creating flyers, advertisements, or online notices, that the template conforms to the institution's branding standards, and that graphics and images beyond the logo require approval from Marketing before distribution. That last clause catches people out: a stock photograph dropped into a flyer is not a neutral choice.
The template then divides its guidance into three lists. The required items, for anything under the board's oversight, are the ones to check first.
| Required on every invitation | What it prevents |
|---|---|
| The title of the project | An unidentifiable notice that cannot be matched to an approved file |
| The word "research" or "project" | An invitation that reads as a service, a benefit, or an assignment |
| A contact name, with a phone number or email address, for whoever is responsible for recruitment | An anonymous notice with nobody accountable for it |
| Eligibility criteria, briefly, where they apply — especially when payment depends on meeting them | People volunteering for something they cannot join, or feeling misled once told |
| Whether participants will be paid, in plain wording | Payment revealed late, when it can function as pressure |
On payment the template is precise. Acceptable phrasings state that participants will be paid, will receive a gift card, or will be compensated. The amount may appear, but it must not be the most prominent element on the page, and it must not be excessive relative to the nature of the project, so as not to be coercive. Where payment depends on how much of the project a person completes, it should be given as a range, or with wording such as "at least" or "up to".
What does the template merely recommend?
A second, softer list improves almost every flyer we see: the purpose of the project, a brief statement of what is expected of the participant, the time asked of them, and where it will take place. These are not mandatory, but a notice missing all four generates questions from both boards and confusion from readers.
The template also has an opinion about tone. Phrases such as "help needed" or "subjects wanted" should be avoided; the recommended wording invites instead — "You are invited", or "Participants invited". It is a small distinction with a real rationale. Recruitment that sounds like a plea, or like a call for raw material, tilts a voluntary decision.
What is never allowed on the page?
The third list is prohibition, and it maps closely onto long-standing federal expectations about advertising. Nothing on a Chamberlain recruitment item may include:
- Commercial sponsors or product names.
- Coupons or discounts on a product offered as compensation once that product reaches market.
- Promises of "free treatment" where the real meaning is only that participants will not be charged for taking part.
- Terms such as "new treatment" or "new medication" without explaining that the item is investigational.
- Claims that state or imply a certainty of a favourable outcome, or benefits beyond what the consent document and protocol describe.
- Exculpatory language — wording by which a prospective participant waives, or appears to waive, a legal right. This mirrors the prohibition in 45 CFR 46.116(a)(6), which reaches the consent process as a whole.
- Bold or enlarged print, or any other device, used to emphasise payment or the amount payable.
Read that list next to your draft rather than from memory. The two that catch careful people are the certainty claim and the payment emphasis, because both usually arrive through ordinary design instinct: a confident headline about improving outcomes, and a payment figure set larger because it is the part readers care about. Both are precisely what the rule forbids.
What does the practicum site want that Chamberlain does not?
The facility's concerns are physical and institutional, and its council will raise things the school never mentions. Where may a notice be displayed, and who authorises a posting in that unit? Does anything shown to patients or families require a communications or brand review? May staff be emailed through internal distribution lists, or is that route closed to outside projects? Is a recruitment approach permitted during working hours at all?
There is also a question that belongs to the facility more than the school: how you avoid your own position doing the persuading. If you are recruiting colleagues on a unit where you work or precept, an invitation with your name on it carries weight you did not intend to apply, and a council will want to see distance built into the method — a notice rather than a personal ask, a neutral point of contact, an opt-in that nobody observes. The site permission article covers why that council exists separately from the person who signs your access letter.
Where the people being recruited are Chamberlain's own community, a further internal route applies. Chamberlain states that projects collecting data from its community must first be reviewed and approved by its Office of Institutional Effectiveness & Research, and that recruitment flyers and surveys aimed at that community require review by Marketing and Regulatory Compliance before they reach the IRB, under the institution's surveying procedures. That is a third desk, and it sits ahead of the board rather than after it.
Which version may actually be used?
Only the approved one, in both files. Chamberlain lists use of an unapproved consent form among its examples of promptly reportable non-compliance, and it requires an amendment for changes to previously approved recruitment or informed consent materials. At continuing review it asks for a clean copy of the current recruiting materials. The pattern is consistent: recruitment items are controlled documents, not working drafts.
In practice, this means version discipline of a very unglamorous kind. Keep one dated master of every recruitment item — flyer, email script, verbal script, any online notice. Submit final-form artwork rather than a description of intended artwork. When either board asks for a change, fold it into the master and carry it to the other board through an amendment, so that the copy on the wall, the copy in the school's file, and the copy in the facility's file are the same copy. Where a script will be recorded or spoken, get the script approved as written. The application checklist lists every item both submissions expect, and how it works shows where recruitment sits in the wider route.
What to do next
If you have a flyer drafted, or an email you were about to send to a unit, hold it until both boards have seen it in final form. Book the free application review and attach the draft along with the facility name. A consultant will mark it against the template's three lists, flag anything the facility's council is likely to query about posting or approach, and tell you whether an internal review desk applies before the board sees it. If the material is already compliant, that is what you will hear. The FAQ explains what the review includes.
Sources
- Chamberlain, Institutional Review Board — Recruitment Flyer Template, with instructions for printed material inviting participation, and its required, recommended and prohibited items — chamberlain.edu · IRB recruitment flyer template (PDF)
- Chamberlain University, Institutional Review Board — submission attachments, internal review by Institutional Effectiveness & Research and by Marketing/Regulatory Compliance, amendment and continuing-review rules, reportable non-compliance — chamberlain.edu/chamberlain-university-institutional-review-board
- Chamberlain University, DNP Project & Practicum Handbook — practicum site rules and the site's own review body — chamberlain.edu/media/3691/dnp-project-practicum-handbook.pdf
- 45 CFR 46.116(a)(6) — the bar on exculpatory language across the consent process — law.cornell.edu · section 46.116
- US Food and Drug Administration, "Recruiting Study Subjects" — information sheet guidance for IRBs and clinical investigators, which treats direct advertising as the opening of the consent and selection process and sets out what an advertisement may and may not say — fda.gov · recruiting study subjects
- University of Utah IRB, guidance on advertisements — advertisements are submitted in final form, and recorded material is approved from the script — irb.utah.edu/guidance-series/advertisements/
Templates and branding requirements are revised over time. Where this article and Chamberlain's current handbook or IRB portal differ, the handbook and portal govern. This practice is independent of Chamberlain University and is not affiliated with it.