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Recruiting and retaining parents in behavioral intervention trials: Strategies to consider
Caitlin Shneider1, Marisa E Hilliard2, Maureen Monaghan3
1Children's National Hospital, Washington, DC, United States of America.
Insights
Effective recruitment and retention strategies, including collaboration and incentives, achieved over 97% retention in a type 1 diabetes trial for young children. These methods are feasible for pediatric chronic illness studies.
Area of Science:
- Clinical Trials
- Pediatric Endocrinology
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Recruitment and retention are critical for randomized controlled trial (RCT) success.
- Optimizing these processes is essential but often underreported in trial publications.
Purpose of the Study:
- To present successful recruitment and retention strategies used in a behavioral RCT for children with type 1 diabetes.
- To demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of these strategies in a real-world clinical setting.
Main Methods:
- The First STEPS trial enrolled 157 caregivers of children newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
- Strategies included medical team collaboration, trained staff, behavioral run-in, financial incentives, study identity items, stakeholder feedback, and minimized participant burden.
Main Results:
- Achieved 58% enrollment of eligible families and maintained over 97% retention for 15 months.
- Participants reported high satisfaction with the implemented recruitment and retention strategies.
Conclusions:
- The described strategies are feasible for recruiting and retaining families in pediatric chronic illness trials, such as type 1 diabetes.
- These methods may be applicable to other pediatric populations, with future research encouraged to focus on engaging diverse samples.
Objective:
Recruitment and retention are paramount to the success of randomized controlled trials (RCTs); however, strategies and challenges to optimize recruitment and retention are often omitted from outcomes papers. The current manuscript presents strategies used to recruit and retain over 97% parents of young children newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes for over 15-months post-randomization enrolled in First STEPS, a behavioral, two-site RCT.
Method:
Participants included 157 primary caregivers of young children newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Recruitment and retention strategies are described and include collaboration with medical teams, careful selection and training of study staff, inclusion of a behavioral run-in prior to randomization, financial incentives, creation of a study identity using retention items, obtainment of feedback from community stakeholders, and minimization of participant burden.
Results:
Use of recruitment and retention strategies resulted in enrollment of 58% of eligible and reached families, with retention of the enrolled sample above 97% for over 15 months. Participants reported high acceptability of and satisfaction with specific recruitment and retention strategies.
Conclusions:
The strategies used to recruit and retain caregivers of young children newly diagnosed with a chronic illness were feasible to implement within multidisciplinary diabetes clinics and may apply to other pediatric populations. Future research may benefit from a focus on strategies to engage more diverse samples.
Trial Registration:
ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02527525.
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