Recruiting research participants for transport research: Reflections from studies on autonomous vehicles in the UK

Much research is dependent on the willingness of participants to give up their time - whether renumerated or not - and engage with the activities we have designed such as interviews, surveys, writing diaries, and taking photos. We talk about social research being dependent on 'self-selection', but we say less about what happens when the people with whom we wish to engage do not agree to do so; when we are unable to get the insights we need to answer our research questions or respond to our research aims. In this Viewpoint, we discuss three interconnected methodological themes: locating and accessing participants, participant self-selection and identification in the context of the research, and topical fatigue. We discuss these themes in relation to recent developments in transport and the rise of autonomous vehicles in particular.