Adequate recruitment is vital to the success of your registry. As such, researchers should dedicate sufficient staff time, budget, and resources to planning and conducting recruitment and enrollment activities.
The information you learn from your formative research and conversations with stakeholder partners can help you design your registry in a way that will promote participation. You should design recruitment and enrollment processes that address the barriers and concerns of potential participants and speak to factors that may motivate them to join. In general, you should strive to make it easy for participants to enroll.
For example:
Below are examples of studies assessing various recruitment methods among different populations and registry topics:
Health disparities exist for many different health conditions 1 and response to treatment can vary among different groups of people by characteristics such as race/ethnicity and sex.2, 3, 4 Diversity among research participants is important, because studies with diverse participants can be applied to wider populations and have greater ability to benefit the general public.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC Health Disparities and Inequalities Report — United States, 2013. MMWR 2013;62(Suppl 3).
Liu, K. A., & Mager, N. A. D. (2016). Women’s involvement in clinical trials: historical perspective and future implications. Pharmacy Practice, 14(1), 708.
Oh SS, Galanter J, Thakur N, Pino-Yanes M, Barcelo NE, et al. (2015) Diversity in Clinical and Biomedical Research: A Promise Yet to Be Fulfilled. PLOS Medicine 12(12): e1001918.
Bichell, RE (2016). Clinical Trails Still Don’t Reflect the Diversity of America. National Public Radio (NPR).
Soldin, O., & Mattison, D. (2009). Sex Differences in Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics. Clinical Pharmacokinetics, 48(3), 143–157.
Despite the fact that United States federally funded research is required to emphasize including women and minorities as research participants (for more information, see NIH policy implementation page), women and racial/ethnic minorities continue to be under-represented2, 5.
Researchers can be proactive by considering diversity when planning their recruitment process, and continuing to evaluate the diversity of participants throughout enrollment. Remember that in addition to race, ethnicity, and sex, diversity encompasses other characteristics including gender, age, socioeconomic status, and geography.
Populations that are underrepresented among registry participants may require targeted recruitment efforts. Strategies to consider for recruiting underrepresented populations include:
Recruitment strategies should be tailored to your registry and the people you are trying to recruit. In other words, your formative work and conversations with stakeholders should guide your selection of recruitment strategies.
Type of Strategy | Examples |
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Clinic or hospital-based |
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Mail and phone recruitment |
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Multi-media recruitment methods |
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Community-based |
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Example of Follow-Up Communication Methods | Examples | ||
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Clinic or hospital-based |
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Mail and phone recruitment |
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Multi-media recruitment methods |
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Community-based |
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Creating effective recruitment materials is an important part of the recruitment process. Strategies for creating high quality, effective materials include:
Questions? Contact us at nctracs@unc.edu or 919-966-6022.
© 2019-2022. The NC TraCS Institute is the integrated hub of the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Registry Toolkit website is supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), National Institutes of Health, through Grant Award Number UL1TR002489. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. | accessibility