Evaluation of a brief questionnaire for assessing Barriers to Research Participation

Racial minority groups are often underrepresented in biobehavioral research. Mistrust stemming from historic abuses of minority research participants is one explanation for this problem. Although mistrust and other variables affect dispositions toward research, brief, quantitative measures of these factors have not been available to researchers in assessing potential recruitment barriers. The present paper is a description and psychometric examination of the Barriers to Research Participation Questionnaire (BRPQ), a new survey designed to assess five factors that affect research participation (religious beliefs, mistrust, health-related fears/beliefs, role overload/ time demands, and perceived personal and community benefits). Good model-fit for the proposed five-factor structure and good test-retest reliability were observed among African American undergraduate men and women at an urban, primarily African American university. The BRPQ appears to be a reliable and valid tool for researchers to use in identifying barriers to recruiting African American participants.