# Presentation: 911000

## Client Recruitment, Retention, and Data Collection

**Chris Ringwalt, DrPH**
**Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation**
**Janer Hernandez, Ph.D., CADAC II, LADC I****NECAPT Associate**
**Danielle Lazar****Access Community Health Network**

## Recruitment: if you build it, will they come?

- Recruitment of underserved high risk populations, particularly minorities, is a challenge; there are no easy solutions
- Requires a very substantial investment of energy and commitment
- Two key strategies, involving
- Collaborating with CBOs
- Selecting and training field staff

## Developing effective community partnerships

- Administrators of CBOs may be motivated to assist in recruitment if project likely to:
- Provide insights into their clients’ needs
- Enhance or improve their services
- Relationship between PD and CBOs are critical, as are rewards to CBO
- Sense of common goals
- Support for collaboration by respected colleagues
- Higher profile in community
- Publication credit
- Additional income (if possible)
- Clear benefits to clients
- Minimal increase in burden on staff
- Recruitment protocols mutually developed

## Selecting and training field staff

- Building rapport with clients is key to successful recruitment efforts
- Cultural compatibility and competence essential with minority clients
- Hiring from participant community can be helpful
- Desirable personal attributes
- Ability to communicate enthusiasm and empathy
- Respectful persistence and cheerful resilience
- Flexibility in scheduling appointments
- Non-judgmental attitude towards risk behaviors
- Ability to establish and maintain suitable boundaries
- Training and close supervision essential

## Preventing attrition in data collection

- Maintain continuity of contacts
- Demonstrate respect and understanding of respondents’ situations, constraints, priorities, and schedules
- Use empathy and reflective listening
- Listen to their stories, remember salient details
- Make service referrals as appropriate
- Problem-solve with them how to overcome challenges
- Gently convert “no’s” into “maybe’s” – offer to call back at more convenient time
- Appeal to their altruism – purpose of study is to help others like them

## Other tricks of the trade

- Develop and update a master list “anchoring contacts”
- People who will know where they may be found or socialize
- Family members, friends, and neighbors
- Case managers and health care providers
- Neighborhood storeowners and bartenders
- Stress maintenance of confidentiality
*Include all plans for data collection in signed informed consent secured at time of recruitment*

## More tricks

- Mail birthday and holiday cards
- Send fliers on brightly colored pages
- Use certified mailings requiring signatures
- Provide products like key chains and laminated cards, with project logo and project’s toll free number
- Collect Social Security numbers
- Encourage respondent to call in to report all life changes
- Establish carefully maintained, frequently updated, and closely monitored computerized databases

## Still more tricks	

- Maintain extensive contacts with
- Criminal justice and welfare system
- Homeless shelters
- Drug treatment facilities
- Bargain with parole officers for reduced penalties for participation in research

## Still more tricks	

- Mine publicly available databases
- Phone directories
- Address listings
- Department of Corrections and Court sites
- My Space
- Facebook
- WhitePages.com
- ReferenceUSA.com
- Da+.us
- ZabaSearch.com
- Use proprietary data bases
- ChoicePoint’s AutoTrackXP
- QuickInfo.net
- $5-15/search

## Pay them!

- Provide incentive of $20/interview *(see last paragraph of SAMHSA Extramural Policy Statement No. SEPS 06-02; note that CSAP does not yet have its own policy in this regard)*
- Respondents *clearly prefer cash*
- Pay them *as quickly as possible*
- Consider using* debit cards, *with same day deposit following each completed interview

## Good luck!

- What’s all this *tracking* likely to cost per respondent?
- Universal strategies: $100
- Tailored strategies: $175
- Interview time, incentives *extra*
*Cost too much? Do what you can afford*
*Minimal* acceptable response rate: 70-80%
*Response rates of 90% not unreasonable in longitudinal studies of drug abusers*

## Bibliography

- American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Network
- Boys, A et al. (2003). Minimizing respondent attrition in longitudinal research. *Journal of Adolescence, 26,* 363-373.
- De Jarlais, D. Perlis, T. Settembrino, J. (2005).  The use of electronic debit cards in longitudinal data collection with geographically mobile drug users.  *Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 77,* 1-5
- Festinger, D. et al. (2008).  Higher magnitude cash payments improve research follow-up rates without increasing drug use and perceived coercion.  *Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 96*, 128-135.

## Bibliography (continued)

- Haggerty, K. et al. (2008).  Ten years later: Locating and interviewing children of drug abusers. *Evaluation and Program Planning, 31,* 1-9.
- Leonard, N. et. al (2003).  Successful recruitment and retention of participants in longitudinal behavioral research.  *AIDS Education and Prevention, 15,* 269-281.
- Scott, C. (2004). A replicable model for achieving over 90% follow-up rates in longitudinal studies of substance abusers. *Drug and Alcohol Dependence*, *74,* 21-36.