An effort that should not be underestimated
In terms of the number of providers, courses offered and participants, adult and continuing education is the largest education sector in Germany.
Compared to teachers from other areas of education, however, we know relatively little about adult education teachers.
This is where the study “Teachers in Adult Education – A Panel Study” (TAEPS) comes in.
The aim is to trace a comprehensive picture of teaching staff in continuing education.
To this end, several thousand teachers from all areas of continuing education are to be surveyed as part of a panel study.
infas was commissioned by the German Institute for Adult Education (DIE), Bonn, to conduct the survey.
Survey design
The challenge of the study is access to teaching staff.
There are no accessible registers from which a random sample could be drawn.
For this reason, access to teaching staff was to be gained via further education institutions, companies active in further education and administrations.
However, there was no complete and accessible address register for these either.
An address search was therefore first carried out in order to create an address register of continuing education institutions for the sampling.
This involved an extensive search for addresses of continuing education institutions in databases and continuing education portals using search engines and the DIE’s address database.
A stratified random selection of institutions was made from this address register.
The selected institutions were then to be interviewed by telephone about their continuing education areas and activities and subsequently asked for support in recruiting teaching staff.
To this end, the respondent from the institution was to forward an invitation email to all of its teaching staff.
This invitation contained a link to the recruitment survey, which the teaching staff could use to register for participation in the study.
Recruitment and registration process
The recruitment process in particular was tested in a pilot study.
In the pilot, the facilities were quite willing to take part in the telephone survey.
A total of 383 institutions were used in the pilot study and 45 interviews were conducted (11.7 percent).
However, recruiting teaching staff via the institutions proved to be extremely difficult and not enough people could be recruited to interview the teaching staff.
It was assumed that an average of 8 panel-ready teachers would be recruited per institution.
In the pilot study, however, only 1.8 panel-ready teachers were recruited per institution.
In order to find out more about the challenges in the recruitment process, qualitative interviews were conducted with the institutions.
Existing assumptions about the reasons for the slow recruitment were validated.
The invitation to teaching staff was not forwarded for the following reasons: Further training in companies and administrations is often outsourced to external providers, so there is no direct access to teaching staff.
Self-employed individuals were surveyed who do not employ any other teaching staff.
Institutions do not benefit directly from support with recruitment.
In many institutions, a higher-level department is responsible for teaching staff.
However, no contact was made with this department as part of the survey of institutions.
Their contact details were required for the survey of teaching staff.
As no register sample was available, this had to be collected first.
For data protection reasons, the registration process was a multi-stage procedure:
- Short recruitment survey on the form of employment to ensure that the person belongs to the target group.
- Question on panel readiness and forwarding to the online address tool for panel-ready persons.
- Enter the teacher’s contact details (e-mail address, telephone number, address) to contact them for an interview.
- Confirmation of contact details: For data protection reasons, a double opt-in procedure was implemented, i.e. following registration, a confirmation link valid for 48 hours was sent to the e-mail address entered. Teachers had to confirm their contact details by clicking on the link, otherwise the contact details were automatically deleted.
As part of the multi-stage recruitment process required under data protection law, a significant proportion (36%) of potential study participants were lost, as not all individuals completed the registration process in full, as they terminated the questionnaire prematurely, were not willing to participate in the panel, did not provide an address or did not confirm the address provided.
Several minor changes were made to the survey instruments and materials for both the institutions and the recruitment survey in order to check whether this had an effect on the willingness to participate in the referral process on the part of the institutions or on the willingness to register on the part of the teaching staff.
Unfortunately without success.
It was therefore concluded from the pilot study that recruitment solely via a survey of institutions is not sufficient and that access to teaching staff needs to be reconsidered.
Social media and targeted telephone acquisition
Recruitment measures were expanded for the main survey.
An independent study website was set up where teaching staff can find out about the TAEPS study and register directly for the survey.
In addition, the TAEPS study was advertised intensively via various channels (newsletters, social media channels, contacting associations and trade unions, advertisements in specialist journals and blog posts).
The addresses of the further education institutions from the address register were used for further measures.
In order to increase the reach of access to relevant multipliers at institution level, around 25,000 institutions were also contacted by email with the request to forward the study information to their teaching staff.
Several thousand reminders were also sent by e-mail to the respondents of the survey of institutions.
Although numerous accompanying measures were already taken at the start of the survey to increase awareness of the study and thus attract teachers to participate, this was only reflected to a limited extent in the number of registrations for the survey.
Just a few weeks after the start of the survey, weekly registrations steadily declined and it became clear that the field for recruiting teaching staff needed to be extended.
The facility survey was completed in November 2022.
The recruitment survey is still ongoing.
It is already becoming even clearer than in the pilot study that a significant proportion of potential teachers are lost in the multi-stage recruitment process. 
Initial evaluations showed that the majority of participants were made aware of the study via the further education institutions.
Accordingly, considerations regarding further recruitment strategies focused on increasing the overall reach of the study announcement and on the question of how to achieve a higher level of commitment when contacting potential multipliers to pass on the study information.
For example, business cards with the QR code to the study website were enclosed with the thank-you letters to teachers with the incentives, which could be passed on to interested colleagues.
At the same time, an external social media campaign (Meta, LinkedIn) was commissioned to increase the reach and visibility of the study by targeting people working in the field of continuing education.
The most time-consuming measure was the “telephone canvassing”, which was no longer carried out as a standardized survey from a telephone studio, but was conducted manually by DIE employees.
From January 2023, as part of a “cold approach”, various people who could presumably be used to gain access to teaching staff were (re)contacted to inform them about the study and ask for support in recruiting teaching staff.
For example, all adult education centers were contacted again by telephone.
Furthermore, institutions, companies active in continuing education and administrations from the address register were sorted according to size and a comprehensive telephone contact was sought.
In addition, regional education networks, coaches and trainers were researched and contacted.
Access to companies and firms active in further education proved to be particularly difficult or even impossible.
For this reason, relevant private networks of DIE employees were also used for acquisition, with the aim of achieving a higher level of commitment to support.
When telephone canvassing began, a significant increase in the number of successfully registered teachers was noted.
Feasible, but costly
The direct and personal approach to the institutions proves to be a valuable addition to the previous recruitment strategies and plays a decisive role in achieving the targeted number of participants.
For continuing education institutions in particular, this direct contact by a scientific research institute appears to be the decisive “door opener” for gaining access to hard-to-reach teaching staff. The aim of this form of telephone canvassing is not only to provide information about the study, but also to promote the development and maintenance of institutional and personal trust. This relationship of trust is essential in order to increase the willingness of the institutions to support and pass on the study information. In comparison, reaching the relevant target group via the other contact strategies and channels appears to work significantly less well. It can therefore be deduced from the experiences of the pilot study and initial findings from the main survey that a significantly larger number of relevant target persons must be reached in order to achieve the targeted number of successfully registered participants due to the multi-stage registration procedure required under data protection law. In addition, the forwarding of study information at the level of further education institutions and companies active in further education is not a “sure-fire success”.
Another possible investment in the recruitment of potential study participants would be to target teachers.
For reasons of time and cost, it has so far not been possible to specifically approach teachers at conferences and congresses, so that no statement can currently be made on the effectiveness of such a measure.
Overall, a combination of different recruitment strategies appears to be essential in order to attract sufficient study participants.
These initial findings offer valuable pointers for future studies with similar target groups with regard to a targeted recruitment process and possible challenges and limitations. This article was first published in Lagemaß 13 “Invest”. To read more: The TAEPS study website: https://www.taeps.de/
