Recruitment and Retention of Healthy Minority Women into Community-Based Longitudinal Research

Abstract

This report examines the impact of individualized, population-based recruitment and retention approaches on the development of a subject pool, enrollment, and retention at 12 months of healthy, community-based women in three ethnic groups: African Americans, non-Hispanic European Americans, and Mexicans/Central Americans. Of 722 women contacted and screened, 346 (48%) were eligible and consented to participate. Attrition at 12 months was low (10%) compared with other published reports. The largest group of potential subjects was identified through broadcast media approaches, but this method produced the highest number of ineligible women and highest rate of attrition. Printed matter produced the next largest group of potential subjects, but ineligibility was high (53%). Face-to-face interactions enrolled the highest proportion of eligible women (84%) and lowest overall attrition (7%). Direct referral yielded fairly efficient enrollments (57%) and average attrition. Multiple approaches for recruitment can produce a diverse sample of healthy, community-based women. Face-to-face recruitment results in the highest yield of participants with the lowest attribution but is presumed to require more resources.

Strategies and Cost of Recruitment of Middle-aged and Older Unmarried Women in a Cancer Screening Study

“…However, women who were recruited from community events were more likely to be older, a member of a minority group, with lower incomes, and with a self-reported disability. This is comparable with other studies that documented higher yields of racial and ethnic participants when face-to-face contact methods were used (37,46,(48)(49)(50)(51)(52).…”

Evaluating the Efficiency of Methods to Recruit Asian Research Participants

“…This finding holds true for both Chinese and Korean speakers, regardless of whether the recruiters had strong ties to the ethnic community. These findings echoed prior recruitment research that shows media broadcasting or printed materials reach a larger portion of the general population (Appel et al 1999;Gilliss et al 2001;McLean and Campbell 2003), and that word of mouth was effective for recruiting Hispanics who spoke little or no English . We also found that the differences of screener completion rates across the recruitment methods were statistically significant.…”

“…Referrals or word of mouth seemed to work better for identifying minority participants who qualify for the study. However, they reached a far smaller number of potential participants (Bistricky et al 2010;Gilliss et al 2001;Wisdom et al 2002).…”

Alcohol and disadvantaged men: A feasibility trial of an intervention delivered by mobile phone

“…The recruitment strategy used evidence‐based techniques for hard to reach and minority groups: culturally sensitive study materials, multiple recruitment strategies and incentives 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43. Two recruitment strategies were assessed: recruitment from general practice registers and by a community outreach strategy.…”