Lessons learned: research with rural Mexican-American women

The authors share lessons learned from 5 community-based research studies involving rural Mexican-American women. The 10 lessons revolved around compensation, confidentiality, recruitment, crossing paths, mailings, locating people, participation/attendance, translation, children, and closure. Despite their clinical knowledge and previous experiences in service with this population, researchers found recruiting and retaining participants and data collection far more challenging than expected. This article is significant as it illustrates the extensive time, expense, and effort required to conduct research with a rural population experiencing health disparities. Recommendations are provided to assist in planning and designing community-based and culturally sensitive research that has realistic time and budget allowances.