General Recruitment Plan Language:
Patients presenting for outpatient or inpatient treatment at the Center for Drug and Alcohol Programs or through the intake office will be considered for screening. In addition, potential study subjects may be recruited from the Dorchester Alcohol and Drug Commission and/or the Charleston County Drug and Alcohol Program as well as through advertisement (newspaper, flyer, TV, radio, internet). IRB approved advertisements will be placed in local newspapers or displayed as flyers to aid recruitment. Screening will be conducted by research personnel assigned to the protocol by reviewing the study inclusion/exclusion criteria with individuals interested in participating in the study to determine potential eligibility. Medical records will NOT be reviewed to identify potential study subjects. Potential study participants will be given a detailed description of the study requirements, risks, and benefits. Informed consent will be obtained by Dr. Smith (PI), by one of the study Co-Investigators or research staff prior to any study procedures being performed. The informed consent document will be reviewed in detail with the subject, and the subject will be asked to read the document and asked if he/she has any questions. Consent will be documented by the signature/date of the subject on an informed consent agreement as well as by the investigator/research personnel obtaining consent, and by a witness. A copy of the signed document will be provided to the participant.
Retention Example 1:
This study will also be submitted to the DMH IRB. Dr. Smith is on staff at CMHC as well as the IOP. The clinical staff at DMH are a valuable resource for the research staff with regard to the successful recruitment of potential study participants. In order to recognize their consideration, time, and effort in notifying research staff of the names of potential referrals, a random drawing will be held, at a maximum monthly, as a means of compensation. Each time a member of the clinic staff refers a client to the research office, regardless of whether or not the referral is enrolled into the study, they will have their name entered for a chance to receive a $10.00 gift certificate. Staff members who make referrals to the research office will not be directly compensated for each referral they make. When recruitment for the study ends, everyone who made a referral and was entered into the monthly drawing will have a chance to randomly be selected for a one-time, $50.00 gift certificate, regardless of the number of referrals they provided.
Recruitment Example 2:
A variation of chain-referral or “snowball” sampling, called “Respondent-Driven Sampling” (RDS), will be used to enhance recruitment of the sample. Similar to traditional chain-referral techniques, the RDS sampling methodology is based on recruiting the eligible friends and acquaintances of adolescents in the community, so that the sample “snowballs”. In essence, RDS elaborates snowball sampling by adding incentives to recruit eligible participants. We believe this will enhance our ability to recruit adolescents for this study. Adolescents will be given IRB approved business cards to pass on to other potential participants. The research staff will write a unique code linked to the person who passes them out. A potential referral will be instructed to call the site offices if interested for screening and, if eligible, an appointment for further evaluation. If a referral completes the screening process and is eligible for the study, the participant who referred the person will receive $10. Detailed specification of the eligibility requirements will not be released because ineligible people could be tutored in the requirements and seek entry into the project. Participants who pass their business cardsto potentially eligible subjects can redeem them at any time after the referral has completed an assessment and/or interview.
Recruitment Methodology Example 3:
Recruitment and Retention for Study, A Social Ecological Based Smoking Cessation Intervention in Public Housing Neighborhoods
Neighborhood and Subject Recruitment. We have received permission from the respective housing authorities to conduct the interventions in the 14 eligible neighborhoods. Our team has worked with public housing neighborhoods and residents for the past 8 years.The PI, Co-I, and/or project managers will meet with neighborhood leaders (i.e., tenant association) prior to data collection to explain the overall purpose of the study. Following, ethnic minority graduate students will complete the neighborhood level data collection. (See Section D2d1 for detail on procedures). During this neighborhood data collection process and interaction, the graduate students will elicit assistance from neighborhood liaisons to distribute flyers (dates and times of neighborhood information sessions, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and toll-free lines for further information) and “word of mouth” to recruit individual participants for the study. They will also place flyers in the community center, mailbox center, housing authority office, and other key sites in the neighborhoods.
The study information sessions will be held in the neighborhood activity center and include a neighborhood bingo game, cookout, or preferred activity of that neighborhood (as identified by the tenant association) based on our pilot work. During these sessions, the PI or Co-I and project manager will provide a brief overview of the study. Women who are interested will be screened for eligibility and consented by the PI or Co-PI, enrolled, and baseline data collected.
Based on our preliminary studies, we expect to schedule two introductory/baseline data collection sessions in each neighborhood to enroll 29 eligible participants. We are anticipating one month to complete the neighborhood data collection and one month to enroll eligible individual participants in each neighborhood. In our two previous pilot studies, we screened a total of 359 women from six public housing neighborhoods and enrolled 250 of these 359 women (i.e., averaging 42 women per neighborhood). Of the 109 women that were screened and not enrolled, ineligibility or failure to consent was due to: 1) precontemplation stage of change (n=15); 2) did not live in defined neighborhood (n=5); 3) had not smoked in past 24 hours as validated by exhaled CO or salivary cotinine (n=14); 4) < 18 years of age (n=8); and, 5) other (n=69).
Subject Retention.Several previously used strategies will be continued to maintain high retention rates. These include: 1) using indigenous CHWs with expertise in navigating the social environment; 2) providing telephone messages where participants can leave voice mail; 3) scheduling evening and weekend group meetings and data collection schedules; 4) scheduling all meetings and data collection in the neighborhood (i.e., community center); 5) use of incentives (i.e., door prizes such as candles, lotions, kitchen supplies) for all group counseling meetings; 6) graduated remuneration at the end of each data collection ($25 gift card at baseline; $50 gift card at 6 months; $100 gift card at 12 months); 7) collecting three contact names, addresses, and phone numbers from participants with specific emphasis on obtaining older contacts (i.e., mothers, aunts, grandmothers) since these contacts are less mobile; 8) sending periodic postcards to participants as well as birthday and holiday cards; and, 9) providing stress balls, t-shirts, and other gifts with study logo and phone number. Our retention rates from our two larger pilot studies were 86%-88% at 6 months; 82% at 12 months.