Clinical trial NCT03534791: Brief Reminders as Intervention for Greater Engagement of Cochrane Translators
Official title: Interventions for Increasing Volunteer Engagement in Knowledge Translation Activity of Translating Cochrane Plain Language Summaries: a Randomized Controlled Trial
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Knowledge Translation
Lead sponsor: University of Split, School of Medicine
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Croatian Science Foundation
First posted: 2018-05-23
Enrollment: 80
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 65
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Intervention model description: All study participants who accept participation in the study will be initially assigned 3 PLSs, and subsequently they will be assigned more PLSs when they translated the previous ones. Intervention group will receive one customized e-mail reminder two weeks after the PLS assignment if they do not translate it within two weeks.

Control group will receive no intervention, i.e. standard procedure. Participants in the control group will receive PLSs for translation, in the frequency they indicated, and they will not receive any reminders. They will be assigned new PLSs once they translate the ones that were previously assigned.
Primary purpose: TREATMENT

Brief summary: The intervention will consist of reminders which will be send to the participants randomly via email, with aim to increase the frequency and amount of translated plain language summaries (PLS).

Detailed description: All study participants who accept participation in the study will be initially assigned 3 PLSs, and subsequently they will be assigned more PLSs when they translated the previous ones. Intervention group will receive one customized e-mail reminder two weeks after the PLS assignment if they do not translate it within two weeks. If they still do not translate the PLS, they will receive another customized e-mail reminder after every two weeks until they translate the PLS or until we reach maximum of 4 bi-weekly reminders (at 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks and 8 weeks post-assignment) or until participants indicate that they are unable to translate it anymore. Text of the reminder that will be sent to the study participants is available in Supplementary file 1. The reminders will be customized for each PLS, and they will contain a name of the PLS indicated in the message. If the participants do not translate PLS within 2 months from PLS assignment, we will stop sending them reminders and we will consider them as dropouts.

Control group will receive no intervention, i.e. standard procedure. Participants in the control group will receive PLSs for translation, in the frequency they indicated, and they will not receive any reminders. They will be assigned new PLSs once they translate the ones that were previously assigned.

All PLSs will be translated in Memsource, a translation management tool that Cochrane plans to start using since March 2018 for managing translation of summaries. Participants will be followed 6 months from the moment of allocation.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* adults ≥18 years who volunteered to translate Cochrane PLSs within the Croatian translation project.

Exclusion Criteria:

* none

Primary outcomes:
measure: Number of translated PLSs within the 6 month follow-up
timeFrame: 6 months
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Number of translated PLSs after 3 months of follow up
timeFrame: 3 months
measure: Time to submitting translation
timeFrame: 6 months
measure: Satisfaction with participation in the translation project
timeFrame: 6 months
measure: Loss of participants
timeFrame: 6 months
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Split
country: Croatia
facility: University of Split School of Medicine
state: Split-Dalmatia County
Study officials:
affiliation: Researcher and administrator
name: Dalibora Behmen, Professor
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Jakus D, Behmen D, Buljan I, Marusic A, Puljak L. Efficacy of reminders for increasing volunteer engagement in translating Cochrane plain language summaries: a pilot randomised controlled trial. BMJ Evid Based Med. 2021 Apr;26(2):49-50. doi: 10.1136/bmjebm-2020-111378. Epub 2020 Jul 7.