Abstract: Psychological research often relies on convenience samples, but the most informative participants may be individuals who are reluctant to engage because of vulnerability, mistrust of the research process, and/or disagreement with a study’s goals. This concern is particularly urgent for certain research questions, but is relevant for all researchers. I will explore challenges in conducting research with “reluctant but informative” participants and strategies to meet and overcome these challenges, arguing that engaging such participants requires attention at every phase of the research process, which necessarily include respecting both individual participants and their communities and balancing competing desiderata. Discussion will include how features and different studies inform decision making about the push-pull of competing priorities, the importance of transparency around sample composition and constraints to generalizability and the potential utility of collaborative research both across research institutions and between researchers and participant communities.