Recruiting Low-Income Healthy Women to Research: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Objective-The study goals were (1) to assess the feasibility of using an existing telephone health information and referral service for low-income, ethnically diverse women to recruit women for research participation; (2) to assess the feasibility of recruiting low-income, African American and Latino men into health research through the women callers to the telephone service; and (3) to describe the challenges women face and the strategies they use when talking to men about the men's health and research participation.Design-We recruited women for individual semi-structured qualitative interviews via the Every Woman Counts (EWC) telephone information and referral service, a California Department of Health Services Cancer Detection Program. This paper describes our eligibility and recruitment assessment, and our qualitative data from 23 interviews with low-income African American and Latino women who called EWC.Results-We found that it was feasible to recruit women, but not to recruit men through women who call this telephone service. Almost 50% (113) of women demographically eligible for recruitment, completed our screening questionnaire, despite calling EWC for a different purpose. Some 48% (54) of those women were eligible for an interview. Of interview-eligible women, 58% (10) of African Americans and 35% (13) of Latinos completed an interview. Only 17% (4) of women referred a man for participation in an interview for our study. Several themes emerged from our analysis of interview data: (1) women's role in men's health can be significant but is often uneasy; (2) challenges when talking to men about their health include health access, gender dynamics, and men's fear of health care; (3) women's understanding of research may be limited; (4) women use a range of strategies to address and overcome men's resistance to taking care of their health and participating in research. Conclusions-The challenges women face when talking with men about their health affect their ability to effectively speak to men about research participation. However, EWC and similar telephone health services may be an effective means for recruiting low-income women to chemoprevention and other studies requiring healthy participants. HHS Public Access

Efficient Identification of Low-Income Asian American Women at High Risk for Hepatitis B

“…The overall rate of willingness to participate was 50% (95% confidence interval 43%–57%), similar to that for Spanish and English callers in our original pilot test 2 and in the Genetic Counseling component of the study. 3 Of the 200 callers invited to participate, 77 spoke English; other languages spoken were Mandarin (41), Cantonese (21), Vietnamese (55), and Korean (6).…”

“…Importantly, we demonstrated in a prior pilot study that approximately 50% of English and Spanish-speaking EWC callers were willing to talk about an entirely new topic when asked to do so by an EWC Information Specialist (IS). 2 …”

Recruitment and retention strategies in clinical studies with low-income and minority populations: Progress from 2004–2014

“…When a specific study is noted in the text, we used the specific terminology of the article. Additionally, we found 33 studies that focused exclusively on recruitment and/or retention of women [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28], and 20% of studies that focused on a specific population group. Although the NIH mandate specifically focused on the recruitment of women for clinical trials, we found no reviews that included information regarding the recruitment numbers of women in prior studies.…”

“Their Depression Is Something Different . . . It Would Have to Be”

“…Specifically, research on the role of women in men's health has included studies on the influence of women on men's dietary behaviors (Allen, Griffith, & Gaines, 2013;Homish & Leonard, 2007), gender roles and relations in health research Joseph, Kaplan, & Pasick, 2007), women's thoughts on the sexual health and sexually transmitted disease testing of men (Oliffe et al, 2013), and women's influence on substance use by their male partners (Homish & Leonard, 2007;Leonard & Homish, 2005;Westmaas, Wild, & Ferrence, 2002). Of the various angles at which the role of women in the lives of men has been examined, the role of female caregivers is presented most frequently in the literature, particularly with regard to the physical health of men.…”