Present:

Coday & O’Toole (UT HOPE): Enrolled 120, N=360, screening rate up to 6-8 per week; 6 month follow up begins 8/00, working on tracking database system in Access, 1.5 FTE to be hired 8/00.

McQuaid (Brown PAQS):  N=288 families, partner with managed care, recruitment begun, enrolled 8 families; program is smoking cessation for parents of kids w/ asthma, nurses who are delivering intervention are trained, home visits have been difficult.

Discussion: Looking into different method of payment (incentive schedule) and ways to improve follow up tracking system.

Sher & Tennant (IIT Partners for Life): Relaxed medical criteria for enrollment, recruiting in 2^nd hospital, assigned to either couples groups or individual groups; may be bias in group preference.

Discussion: May hold "sham" group meeting so spouse can come too.

Riebe & Saunders (URI SENIOR): Community based recruitment, need 1,300 participants, N=237 interviewed, 400 waiting for interview, randomization to start soon, there are 4 groups; expert system stages and sends print materials/prompts for a call. 7 newsletters for each stage.

Toledo (Stanford CHAT): N=225, enrolled 35-40, assessments began 6/5, on target; issues discussed include attention control group (70/30 odds), explanation and value of incentives.

Discussion: Remind staff to frame measurement visits as the "program" (e.g. are getting something as opposed to nothing) and also that gets intervention later. Discussed ways to make incentives perceived as more valuable by asking participants what they would like to earn, shaping/use of incentives to match behavior change over outcomes, emphasize a common theme, logo, color scheme as symbolic of program of change. Suggested trying lottery where each time in earned another chance to win the lottery at end of program. Some discussion about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. Some projects may want to test this empirically.

Williams & Wright (UR Smokers’ Health Study): N=1200, enrolled 195, one barrier has been two consecutive cholesterol tests 1 week apart prior to randomization, tend to not return for 2^nd cholesterol test; another barrier has been inpatient setting, hospitals in area are stressed. Intervention is use of self-determination paradigm in relation to smokers’ health.

Young, Boutin & McKinley (Cornell Healthy Behaviors): Recruit immediately after angioplasty at bed-side, over 50% enrolled which is 350, 5 dropped; follow up phone calls every 3 months for 24 months, using Access to alert calls.

Discussion: Recruiting women is difficult, only 30%, no built in incentives, burden of illness in women, perhaps also lack of resources/support, tracking # of women who refuse to participate.

Blissett (Emory Eat for Life II): N=1000, physical activity in African American churches, some nutrition, 15 churches recruited, 65 per site, recruitment strategy was to establish relationship with wives’ association; incentive is to provide donation to participating churches as well as donation made in individual’s name, intervention using motivational interviewing.

Johnston (Kansas): Recruitment of 16 schools complete, baseline assessments complete, planning follow up data collection.

Strycker (ORI): 35-40 enrolled, N=250; on target, began assessments 6/5, at first intervention retreat week of BCC (7/21).

Work-site (36), school (16), church (15) recruitment complete! Individual recruitment in progress with roughly 1000 enrolled from remaining sites.

Obstacles have been recruitment of women (e.g. may be due fear, time demands) and preference to choose treatment rather than random selection.

Issues discussed included: a) attention control groups (emphasize later availability of intervention and something better than nothing); b) incentive use (shaping, meaning/value, motivation type, reinforcement schedule, sub-study interest at Stanford); and c) biases in reaching populations tend to be overlooking the poor, sick, and those with limited access to traditional health care.

Recommend tracking: 1) Reasons Refuse; 2) Reasons Ineligible; and 3) Characteristics of Non-Participants. If participant refuses, please add the following question at end of each recruitment contact: "WOULD YOU LET US CONTACT YOU AGAIN?" (Other variations include, "May we call you again?" and "Would you be willing to hear about future studies?")

Biases in recruitment can better be understood if we gather this information as a large group. For example, may be pattern of minority bias, poor bias, sick bias, which may also mean clinical trials leave out "underserved and those with no access to traditional care."

Refusers (e.g., Participant biases) Who refuses to participate in research trials? What are the reasons? What does the demographic profile of a refuser look like? Who agrees to be in research and why? May help to understand biases in research in general (barriers for minorities can be distrust of system and other institutional barriers we do not know of).

Ineligibility (e.g., Researcher biases) Who do we exclude? For what reasons do we commonly exclude? What is the demographic profile of who we exclude? Are we overly stringent in our criteria so that we miss the group of most interest and potentially with the largest window for change?

Motivational Factors (No notes about this one.)

1. Beth McQuaid volunteered to follow up with each site regarding use of suggested recruitment tracking data collection prior to next conference call (currently not scheduled).
2. Think about ideas for next meeting, what do you want agenda to be? Ideas at this mtg. were to have a "panel" representing different settings/sites regarding best advertisement, recruitment, and retention strategies.
3. E-mail question "How did you become interested in this study?" Does anyone remember what this is about? (Found this in my notes to self, but can’t recall purpose.)