The costs of recruiting: reflections of bean counter

Although information on the costs of participant recruitment for large-scale clinical trials has been published, the information may not be applicable to small feasibility studies. To determine the most effective recruitment strategy for a feasibility study that sought to adapt laboratory measurement of simple reaction times of individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) to the home, we adapted a metric developed by Chin Feman et al. We recruited individuals with mild to moderate dementia from (a) enrollees in a Memory Research Center, (b) AD support groups, (c) the senior clinic at our university, and (d) senior citizen housing units. We compared costs and enrollment rates associated with various recruitment strategies and found that recruitment through the Memory Research Center was most effective (enrollment rate = 66.7%, salary costs = $49.47 per participant). These findings have implications for investigators preparing budgets for small feasibility studies involving populations with dementia.