How to deal with lost research participants

The stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me. I don't think that a day goes by without me helping some lost research participant find where they are going, find out when they should go there and whom they are going to see.

It's incredible that people volunteer to participate in research, but do not know where it is, what it's about, who it's with, or even when it is. The truth is, that part of the blame lies with us, the researchers. The SONA recruitment system uses 24-hour time. One poor girl was standing outside from 4 until 5:30pm. When I saw her, I asked who she was waiting for, and she told me that she had a 4 o'clock slot. When I checked her print-out, I saw that her research had been scheduled for 14:00. *sigh*

Over time, I have tried a number of different approaches and have found the following series of questions to be the most successful. Please feel free to add to the list. The questions are in order of time-saving-ness.

Participant: Um, excuse me. I'm here for some research thingy.

Researcher:

1. Is the research at MARCS?
2. Do you know who it's with?
3. Do you know what it's about?
4. Do you know when it's on?
5. Do you remember any of the words from the title? they usually say "something about language" ..not helpful
   
6. Do you know anything about the research that might help?
7. What looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like duck?
   
8. Do you know anything?