My mantra for most questions and unexpected situations during product research projects is “stick to the goals” no matter what level of the project I'm working on.
Linking research project objectives to product goals is the driving force behind the team's accomplishments.
When facing recruitment challenges, the script fails to obtain desired information or the deadline needs to be adjusted we stick to the product context and ask ourselves “OK, in this setup, how can we get the information we’re looking for?”.
By staying aligned with specific business or product objectives, we can manage the research study stages effectively even when things don’t go as expected or we need to adapt to new boundaries of resources.