Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2019
College/Unit
School of Medicine
Abstract
Background: Participant recruitment for clinical trials is a significant challenge for the scientific research community. Federal funding agencies have made continuation of funding of clinical trials contingent on meeting recruitment targets. It is incumbent on investigators to carefully set study recruitment timelines and resource needs to meet those goals as required under current funding mechanisms. This paper highlights the cost, labor, and barriers to recruitment for Program ACTVE II, a successful multisite randomized controlled trial of behavioral treatments for depression in adults with type 2 diabetes, conducted in rural and urban settings in three states. Methods: Quantitative and qualitative data on recruitment were gathered from study staff throughout the study recruitment period and were used to calculate costs and effort. The study utilized two main approaches to recruitment: (1) relying on potential participants to see ads in the community and call a toll-free number; and (2) direct phone calls to potential participants by study staff. Results: Contact was attempted with 18,925 people to obtain the enrolled sample of 140. The cost of recruitment activities during the 4.5-year recruitment period totaled $190,056, an average cost of $1358 per enrolled participant. Qualitative evaluations identified multiple barriers to recruitment. Conclusions: Recruitment for Program ACTIVE II exemplifies the magnitude of resources needed to reach recruitment targets in the current era. Continuous evaluation, flexibility, and adaptation are required on the part of investigators, community partners, and funding agencies to successfully reach high-risk populations in rural and urban areas. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03371940. Registered on 13 December 2017.
Digital Commons Citation
Myers, Barbara A.; Pillay, Yegan; Hornsby, W. Guyton Jr.; Shubrook, Jay; Saha, Chandan; Mather, Kieren J.; Fitzpatrick, Karen; and Groot, Mary de, "Recruitment Effort and Costs from a Multi-center Randomized Controlled Trial for Treating Depression in Type 2 Diabetes" (2019). Faculty & Staff Scholarship. 1490.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications/1490
Source Citation
Myers, B. A., Pillay, Y., Guyton Hornsby, W., Jr, Shubrook, J., Saha, C., Mather, K. J., … de Groot, M. (2019). Recruitment effort and costs from a multi-center randomized controlled trial for treating depression in type 2 diabetes. Trials, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-019-3712-x
Comments
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.