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Revolutionizing Remote Human Subjects' Research Recruitment in the U.S. Military During and Post-COVID-19: Lessons
Madison F Clark1,2, Jouhayna Bajjani-Gebara3
1Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine Inc., Bethesda, MD 20817, USA.
Introduction:
Recruitment for human subjects' research in military service members often requires a more nuanced approach because of characteristics unique to this population. The COVID-19 pandemic created additional challenges to research recruitment.
Methods:
From 2021 to 2024, our team conducted a multiphase research study to develop and begin to evaluate a tool to diagnose adjustment disorder in U.S. service members. Over the course of this research and the COVID-19 pandemic, our team developed a robust recruitment strategy that leveraged a variety of in-person and online platforms and utilized online tools to automate data collection.
Results:
Traditional recruitment methods such as flyers, briefings, and word-of-mouth yielded notable study recruitment and participation. Still, these methods alone did not produce enough participation to achieve sample size within the period of performance. Novel and online methods of recruitment, such as social media, ResearchMatch, and marketing listservs, were essential to round out a robust recruitment strategy. However, they also posed new challenges to data fidelity that necessitated the development of procedures to circumvent potential problems.
Conclusions:
Utilization of online and dynamic recruitment strategies and other tools enabled us to achieve desired sample size and complete study aims in an expeditious manner. These methods presented new threats to data fidelity that were successfully addressed.
