TY - JOUR
T1 - Recruiting and motivating black subjects to complete a lengthy survey in a large cohort study
T2 - An exploration of different strategies
AU - Herring, Patti
AU - Butler, Terry
AU - Hall, Sonja
AU - Bennett, Hannelore
AU - Montgomery, Susanne B.
AU - Fraser, Gary
N1 - Funding Information:
This study is funded by a grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) (#5RO1 CA 094594).
PY - 2014/4/3
Y1 - 2014/4/3
N2 - Background: The effectiveness of multiple innovative recruitment strategies for enrolling Black/African American participants to the Adventist Health Study-2 (AHS-2) is described. The study's focus is diet and breast, prostate and colon cancer. Methods. Promotions centered on trust, relationship building and incentives for increasing enrollment and questionnaire return rate. Of the sub-studies described, one had a randomized control group, and the others, informal controls. The subjects are from all states of the U.S. and some provinces of Canada. The offer of a Black art piece, follow-up calls, a competitive tournament as well as other strategies accounted for nearly 3,000 additional returns even though they were often used in small subsets. Results: Flexibility and multiple strategies proved advantageous in gaining the cooperation of Blacks, who are usually reluctant to participate in research studies. Conclusions: Lessons learned during initial enrollment should help us retain our final Black cohort of 26,000, and obtain new information when required.
AB - Background: The effectiveness of multiple innovative recruitment strategies for enrolling Black/African American participants to the Adventist Health Study-2 (AHS-2) is described. The study's focus is diet and breast, prostate and colon cancer. Methods. Promotions centered on trust, relationship building and incentives for increasing enrollment and questionnaire return rate. Of the sub-studies described, one had a randomized control group, and the others, informal controls. The subjects are from all states of the U.S. and some provinces of Canada. The offer of a Black art piece, follow-up calls, a competitive tournament as well as other strategies accounted for nearly 3,000 additional returns even though they were often used in small subsets. Results: Flexibility and multiple strategies proved advantageous in gaining the cooperation of Blacks, who are usually reluctant to participate in research studies. Conclusions: Lessons learned during initial enrollment should help us retain our final Black cohort of 26,000, and obtain new information when required.
KW - African American
KW - Black
KW - Enrollment
KW - Incentives
KW - Multiple strategies
KW - Promotion
KW - Re-promotion
KW - Recruitment
KW - Revisit
KW - Sub-studies
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U2 - 10.1186/1471-2288-14-46
DO - 10.1186/1471-2288-14-46
M3 - Review article
C2 - 24708740
SN - 1471-2288
VL - 14
JO - BMC Medical Research Methodology
JF - BMC Medical Research Methodology
IS - 1
M1 - 46
ER -