Publicity does not increase recruitment to falls prevention trials: the results of two quasi-randomized trials

To test the effect of publicity on recruitment to a randomized trial. Recruitment is often poor in trials. Publicity within recruitment packs might be an inexpensive method of increasing recruitment. We tested this in two quasi-randomized trials.

In a primary care setting, within the context of a randomized trial of falls prevention, we allocated participants to receive a newspaper article about the study with their information sheet. The first trial compared one newspaper article against no article; the second compared a more favorably written article against the original.

In the first study 4,488 participants were allocated into two groups. The response rate was 102 and 97 in the intervention and control groups, respectively (4.55% vs. 4.32%, 95% confidence interval [CI]: -0.98, 1.43); the recruitment rate was 73 and 71, respectively, the difference not being statistically significant. In the second study 2,745 were allocated into two groups with a response rate of 75 and 69 for the control and intervention groups, respectively (5.46% vs. 5.03%, 95% CI: -1.24, 2.09); the recruitment rate was 57 and 54, respectively, the difference not being statistically significant.

These two large experiments revealed no evidence of effect of publicity on recruitment rates.