Cost analysis of obtaining postintervention results in a cohort of high-risk adolescent girls.
BACKGROUND
Little information is available to guide researchers who must estimate the costs associated with obtaining postintervention survey data from research cohorts.


OBJECTIVE
To estimate the costs of following girls involved in the juvenile justice system who were part of a reproductive health promotion intervention for 6 months; to determine the costs of collecting follow-up data; and to determine how participant characteristics, recruitment sites, and follow-up methods affect costs.


METHODS
Direct and indirect costs associated with program staff and various support services' time and the costs of incentives for participation were used to calculate the total cost of follow-up for each participant. Associations between the participant and program characteristics and total costs were assessed using bivariate and multivariate tests.


RESULTS
Of the 449 participants, 402 (89.5%) completed 6-month follow-up. Participants who had been or were pregnant, were runaways, had a history of partner violence, or did not use birth control at baseline were less likely to complete follow-up data. An average of 5.8 attempts was made over an average of 2.97 hr to locate each participant. The average cost of follow-up was $101.82 per participant. Locating participants using family members had the smallest impact on cost, whereas working with parole officers had the largest impact on cost.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings have implications for researchers preparing budgets for interventions that include a follow-up data collection. Greater resources should be allocated and specific strategies should be implemented when research cohorts have large numbers of participants with specific risk behaviors.
Kelly
Patricia J
PJ
School of Nursing and School of Medicine, University of Missouri-Kansas City, MO 64108, USA. kellypj@umkc.edu
Ahmed
Arif
A
Martinez
Elisabeth
E
Peralez-Dieckmann
Esther
E
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D002648:Child; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency / Q000534:rehabilitation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016014:Linear Models; D015399:Nursing Research / Q000191:economics*; D012309:Risk-Taking