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Minutes of Recruitment & Retention Workgroup

July 12-13, 2001, Washington, DC

Present:
Mace Coday (University of Tennessee) (Chair)
Carla Boutin-Foster (Cornell University)
Lynne Braun (Illinois Institute of Technology)
Beth McQuaid (Brown/Miriam)
Sandra Saunders  (University of Rhode Island)
Tamara Sher (Illinois Institute of Technology)
Lisa Strycker (ORI)
1. Retention Table shell surveying site-specific retention strategies was circulated for completion per site. Lynn Braun from IIT provided updates for many of the sites on another document that was e-mailed previously as a survey. Sites providing information at the meeting, and the information compiled by Lynn will be collated into the Retention Table master format as designed by Beth McQuaid previously for recruitment. The updated Retention Table will be circulated by August call.
  
2. Site updates were given in detail. Recorded were common retention strategy themes and difficulties encountered.
  

  • Common strategic themes were use of creativity, flexibility, walking line b/w persistence versus harassment,
    positive attitude, and personal contact.

  • Difficulties include exclusion criteria changing, motivating all treatment and control participants evenly,
    overcoming barriers to busy schedules, & defining data collection windows.
3. Retention Problem-Solving. Held open discussion during work group meeting. Considered streamlining adverse events reporting by using spreadsheet format. Acknowledged importance of context when considering strategic retention approach.  Commiserated about technical difficulties including phone calls, computer glitches, and personal factors such as skill level and style of research team.  Populations and individuals attitude toward research, ethical issues, and cultural sensitivity must be thought through before deciding on a strategy.  Need to have some measure of intervention dose.  Finally, eligibility in the beginning does not mean availability during follow up and need to consider if there are systematic differences in this regard between treatment and control arms.
  
4.

Paper Discussion. In work group Lisa Strycker provided an overview of their site’s recruitment paper.  Described how the literature review had a theme relevant to the population ORI was targeting to reach.   Developed “tree” to report recruitment data. Paper to be circulated along with suggestions of a journal(s). During second day of meeting a group paper topic was generated.  Discussed expanding retention presentation to include literature review, build on strategies that work theme, and add implications for data analyses and generalizability.  Submit to SBM in 9/01(?).
 

5. Action Items: Mace collates table and circulates minutes, table, & presentation; Mace schedules call for 8/01. Carla begins group paper literature review.  Lisa circulates site recruitment paper/tree outline and journal suggestion(s).