Study of participation barriers in family-focused prevention: research issues and preliminary results

There is a growing body of literature which argues for more research on barriers to participation in family-focused interventions, particularly among at-risk families. Following a review of research needs and issues suggested by the literature, this article presents results from a study which 1) evaluates reasons for decisions against participation in a family-focused prevention intervention project and 2) compares characteristics of intervention project participants with those of non-participants. Data on reasons for refusing participation were collected from non-participants during a recruitment telephone interview and via a mail survey. Results indicated that the most frequent reasons given for decisions against participation concerned intervention time demands and research-related requirements such as videotaping. There were no significant differences between participants and non-participants on any sociodemographic variables. Analyses of the relationships between reasons for participation refusal and sociodemographic subgroupings of non-participants, however, suggested that variations exist among these subgroups. Overall, results highlight the feasibility and importance of data collection on intervention project non-participants, both to clarify potential participation barriers and to gather data on sample representativeness.