Recruiting & Retaining Participants
Things to consider while actively recruiting - and retaining- study participants Heading link
Track, evaluate and revise your recruitment strategies and tools in real-time keeping in mind participant barriers to participation.
Recruiting Accordion Heading link
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Considerations
Participant-Level Barriers
- Distrust
Reflect on, and be respectful of distrust of researchers, health care providers, and institutions among community members. Be prepared to answer questions honestly. Consider ways to foster a sense of control among participants in their decisions to participate. Participants need to be well informed of every aspect of their participation and understand risks involved.
- Lack of transportation
- Financial costs associated with participation
- Time commitment
Provider-Level Barriers
- Budget constrains
- Strict logistics such as operating hours and access to special facilities
- Limiting operations to work day hours is limiting for prospective participants
- Language and culture sensitivity limitations among study staff
- Research site location is not accessible to people with limited mobility
- Study is limited to English speaking participants
- Access to internet and technology literacy is needed to participate in the study
Barriers you may be able to improve or influence
- Research site(s) is accessible for wheelchairs and strollers
- Research site(s) are located near neighborhoods where you are planning to recruit participants
- Meet participants at a place that is more convenient to them (e.g., their home, public library, neighborhood site, etc.)
- Provide reimbursement for transportation and or parking
- Schedule transportation for participants
- Provide childcare for parents with young kids
- Study is available in other languages in addition to English
- Bilingual/multilingual and multicultural staff
- Operation hours include after working hours and/or weekends
- Offer interpretation services if needed
- Incentive distribution is easy and timely
- Distrust
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Considerations
It’s useful to set-up a tracking spreadsheet at the start of the study and then enter information as it’s generated. Build-in a number of review timepoints as recruitment progresses so you can evaluate if your strategy is working and revisit if it’s not. If the strategy is not working, you can use this information to request more funding, if need be. Regularly reviewing the progress of recruitment for a specific study allows you to apply the learning to the study and potentially also to future studies
Evaluate and document strategies:
- Track number of participants enrolled in a defined time period as a result of each strategy
- Maintain screening/enrollment log forms with attribution to specific strategy and reasons for ineligibility, or non-enrollment
- Calculate cost of enrollment per participant
- Survey of participants’ opinions re: strengths and weaknesses of strategies Track participant withdrawals and reasons for withdrawal
- Rapidly implement modified or alternative plans if recruitment is lagging
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Considerations
During the planning process:
- Review inclusion and exclusion criteria
- Consider burden on participants. Level of burden will vary depending on your participants demographics: e.g. travel far distance to site, transportation and parking, access to and use of technology.
- Provide adequate incentives throughout the duration of the study.
- Prioritize developing a culture of respect between the participants and research team early in the planning stage of the study
- Build rapport with participants. Show appreciation for their contributions.
- Keep consistency in mind for interactions and communications with participants
- Plan for staff retention
- Build a strong team keeping in mind representation of study population.
- Budget for adequate training and logistical support for study staff