Nour Al-Alryan, Research Assistant, Jordan

Today, I think the world needs human connection more than ever. Do you know that 55% of the impact of our communication comes from body language, 38% from the tone of our voice, and only 7% from the words itself? 

Therefore, Communication is more effective when it's face to face where you can read body language, tone, feelings and reactions more accurately. Whereas digital interaction can be easily misinterpreted. 

What brought me here today is to speak about how transitioning from online recruitment to face to face recruitment broke all the limitations and helped me overcome obstacles faced in research during the covid-19 restrictions. 

Jordan's social media world is very active, where 61.5% of its population has access to social media platforms. However, our ''target population'' for the bulbul's research is very broad when it comes to the participant's educational background and social class! 

People from low socioeconomic status are less likely to have access to social platforms which made it very difficult for us to reach out to them and recruit data through online methods! 

Recruiting participants at Princess Rahma pediatric hospital after lockdown

Now that the lock-down is over and we can finally move freely around Jordan with less restrictions and easier access to different health care settings, remote areas, nurseries and schools, we're now able to reach out to more participants from different social backgrounds and successfully fill in the questionnaires with them. Moreover, we can now carry out events to raise awareness about the importance of normal language development and the impact of speech and language disorders on our children's future! 

We have no choice but to be social creatures, we can't help it! It’s the way we're made…